


The Stagwood Accord

by thecountessolivia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Botanical Inaccuracies, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Erotic Dreams, Fantastical Creatures, Grumpy Tracker Will, M/M, Murderous trees, Perfume, Reclusive Count Hannibal, Sex Sap Seduction, Sex with actual trees, Sloowwwww burn towards first meeting, Unsafe tree cuddling, but it'll be worth it, more story than smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2019-07-27 18:29:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecountessolivia/pseuds/thecountessolivia
Summary: There is nothing the reclusive perfume collector Hannibal Lecter desires more than the purest essence of stagwood.But when Will Graham is hired to track down this rarest of resins, terrible things begin to happen in the Great Wood.An olfactory fairy tale, Hannigram-style. Chapter 5 art by the extraordinaryTheSeaVoices





	1. A discovery and a disappearance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSeaVoices](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSeaVoices/gifts).



> The setting of this story is a fantasy realm called the Moorlands of Balti.

_“The unnatural and the strange have a perfume of their own”_ ― Fernando Pessoa

 ---

Grunting and sweating, the round man called Franklyn lumbered behind Will and his pack.

"Why do we— why do we have to climb the hill again?" the man huffed.

Will kept his eyes forward, on the dogs. Noses to the mossy ground, they were advancing quickly up the steep incline, weaving in a tight rank through the thick tangle of trees. The trail must have been close.

"Stagwood’s only found on exposed forest hilltops," Will replied. "It's where it ages best."

"Uh-huh," Franklyn managed, then paused to wipe his forehead and sneeze loudly. "All that way just to find some stagmare poop," he muttered.

Will frowned over his shoulder. "Stagwood isn't faeces. You don't know much about perfume, do you?"

"I've only just started this job," Franklyn said defensively. "They say I have a good nose. Though probably not as good as your dogs."

 _Nothing compares to those noses_ , Will thought. The dogs were also trained, but Will didn't share this with his companion — it would only invite further attempts at conversation. Over the years Will had succeeded in teaching every member of his pack to find some of the most precious ingredients used in scent-making. Ellie excelled in resins: she could catch a whiff of an oozing styrax shrub from a mile off. Harley sniffed out roots and rhizomes: wild irises and gingers that refused to be cultivated outside the deepest forests. Even little Zoe's nose could home in on the rare lichens and mosses that multiplied only after a certain amount of rainfall.

Just now, they were all following Winston's lead. Winston had been trained to find stagwood.

Stagwood was no wood, but a fatty residue sometimes passed in the droppings of stagmares. Stagmares were rare. Their droppings were rarer — they ate little, and digested slowly. The expelled product of a stagmare's intestinal glands was rarest of all. It was more valuable than gold. And the scent...

The slope eased off, and Franklyn began to recover. His chattering picked up anew with great zest.

"See, I used to make cheese," he proclaimed, trotting up close enough for Will to smell the lactic stench of his sweat. "Quite the nose I had for cheese, too. But this job paid better. I'm sure that's not the reason you're a tracker though, right? You probably do this because you're really good at it."

"I do it because it pays well, same as you," Will said without looking back.

The dogs picked up their pace, and so did Will. He'd lied. He loved the job because it let him escape the company of people like Franklyn, of people in general. In the seclusion of the woods, his mind — normally brimming with strange daydreams and impulses he worked hard to contain — grew still and calm. Here, lost and found among the purity of a thousand scents, he felt like a part of some greater whole.

Why had Jack Crawford sent him out with this moronic cheesemonger anyway? Will might have only just joined Balti's perfumers' guild, but he'd been tracking in the woods for years — he didn't need the safety of numbers. Besides, if worse came to worst, the dogs could easily lead him out of the forest, out to where Price and Zeller were waiting with the donkey cart to take them back into town.

Franklyn panted some steps behind him. Will, too, was getting tired — they'd been searching the woods for hours. Will's glasses kept steaming up and he was leaning more and more on his hiking stick. It was early autumn, but the sickly summer heat had persisted even in the heart of the forest. The fecundity of nature was just starting to soften and slump, releasing the sweet damp redolence of vegetal decomposition. It was a smell Will had always loved. The most beautiful scents, he secretly thought, carried a note of death and decay.  
  
"Jack thinks really highly of you," Franklyn went on. "He couldn't wait for you to get started. I thought he might even send you out to find the Wendigo tree. I mean, that would be something, if someone finally found, if _we_ found—"

"The Wendigo tree?"

Franklyn beamed, clearly pleased to know something Will didn't. "I forgot, you haven't been in the Moorlands long. Everyone around here knows about the Wendigo tree. They say there's only one in existence, though no one’s ever seen it. Stagmares eat its leaves to make stagwood—"

Will stopped at that and spun sharply on his heel. The round cheesemaker collided into him with a startled huff.

"You ever hear of cyclopses, Franklyn?" Will said. "Centaurs, vampires, werewolves? People invent all sorts of stuff. Especially explanations for things they don't understand or don't want to accept." He turned and walked on, briskly. "There's no such thing as a Wendigo tree. Stagwood is secreted and expelled from the glands of a frightened stagmare. It's made from fear."

Franklyn broke into a trot again, trying to keep up. “But what could scare a stagmare? They're so huge.”

“I don't know," Will said quietly. Part of him didn't want to know.

"Right, okay," Franklyn said, clearly unimpressed. "But if the tree doesn't exist, why does Count Lecter want to find it? I mean, if a man as important as Hannibal Lecter—" Franklyn huffed again and nearly took a tumble over a fallen branch.

Of course. Count Hannibal Lecter — Jack's best customer. Will had been in the Moorlands for less than a month but he'd already heard the name spoken plenty of times. Most of the stagwood, if Will ended up finding some, would almost certainly be ground into a pearly black powder, distilled into exquisite tinctures, and delivered to the count whose castle soared above Balti, its dark amber windows glaring over the town and the sprawling moorlands beyond. The entire guild would live off the exorbitant payment it would receive for the scents for months to come.

"There's a rumour that he doesn't wear anything the perfumery sends him," Franklyn continued, conspiratorially. "He just collects the stuff, bottle after bottle. But who's to say? No one's seen the man for years."

“He's a recluse?” Will asked, stepping over a rotting pine log. The trees were thinning now, and the clearing was in sight.

“Well, sort of. He still hosts huge dinner parties. My friend Tobias has been a few times," Franklyn said, puffing up a bit. Then added, more musingly: “He throws the parties, but never shows up himself. Maybe he’s disfigured or diseased? Who knows. The Balti Tattler says he was very good looking back in the day.”

Will wondered why he was still putting up with this useless and insufferable companion going on about nonsense noblemen and imaginary trees. He should have left Franklyn with Price and Zeller and gone on to track alone, in peace. Meanwhile the dogs were getting restless, streaming together, bounding over felled trees, multicolour fur glistening in the dappled sunshine that beamed through the high boughs. They were close now. Will paused to stoop and check for hoof prints when something was thrust before him.

"See?"

A rumpled copy of the Balti Tattler, dragged from Franklyn's bag, was held up under Will's nose. Its garish headline shouted at him:

_Another party at Castle Lecter! But will the host show his face at last?_

Will stared at the paper, then blinked past it. He nudged the paper and Franklyn's hand slowly out of the way.

"Franklyn," he whispered. "It's—"

"Yes, it's obviously unlikely that the count would show up, but it doesn't stop Freddie Lounds from speculating—"

"No. Shut up. Look."

They were standing inside an irregularly shaped impression, overgrown with moss and softened with a bedding of newly rotted leaves. The dip in the earth was enormous, twice the size of a wagon wheel, and shaped like a teardrop cleft in two. Some distance away, another like it had been pressed into the floor of the forest. And some distance further, another.

The dogs had vanished from Will's sight.

Franklyn followed Will's gaze and let out a nervous giggle.

"Oh, that's, uh—"

"Old stagmare prints," Will said quietly. "We're finally getting somewhere."

Franklyn's face, already sweaty, turned clammy and white with terror. The crumpled copy of the Tattler began to shake in his hands. "Does that mean there's stagmares? Oh— oh gods—"

"They're long gone, Franklyn. And they wouldn't hurt you anyway."

From somewhere nearby came an excited bark — Winston's.

Will ran at once.

He ran and bounded like his hounds, leaping over roots and logs, hacking with his walking stick at the tangled vines and branches that got in his way. Instinct carried him on, and the heady familiar promise of discovery made him feel as if he'd given chase after his own heart.

He didn't stop until he found himself in the harsh light of the rocky clearing.

They were all there under the clear sky, the whole pack, woofing and panting and dancing their mad dance of canine joy around a jagged pile of stones that crowned this bald patch of the forest. Will paused for breath, and to savour the moment he knew so well. Then he fed each dog a little piece of jerky from his bag and sunk to his knees beside them.

It lay like a strange flattened egg amongst the stubby wind-battered grasses and crumbled boulders. A smooth palm-sized oval, easily mistaken for an exquisite stone. Somehow both pearly and iridescent yet profoundly black, speckled throughout with broken veins of gold. Like a piece of the night sky.

It was old. The organic matter around it had long vanished, rotted and washed away. The stagmares must have passed through here well over a year ago. Will could almost picture their herd, paused here some moonlit night, looming high above the entire wood. Would the people of Balti have seen them up here then, seen those antlers huge as trees, silhouetted by the moon?

At least a year. And all that time the stagwood had been lying here, while the winds blew and the sun scorched and perfected its properties. Waiting for Will.

He picked it up with both hands, closed his eyes, counted to three — and brought it to his nose.

The world melted away. Or Will did. All that remained was a complex sweetness that saturated his soul and his senses.

The scent of stagwood was ever new. At times it was the warm fur of a clean animal. At others, the smell of rain hitting freshly upturned soil. Sometimes Will thought it smelled like fresh frost and honey. Today it smelled like sunshine flickering on the surface of a lake.

And it would be smashed up, ground up, and sold to some eccentric rich bastard who, according to Franklyn—

Franklyn. Hadn't the little man managed to keep up? Will snapped himself from his reverie and looked around. Only him and the dogs. Only harsh sunshine and howling wind, up here on this bare patch of the world. The rest of the wood had fallen bizarrely quiet. Even the dogs were frozen to their spots, their excitement vanished. They were staring at Will with strangely bewildered eyes.

"Franklyn!" Will called out. "Over here, Franklyn!"

He got up and walked back to the edge of the wood. The dogs stalked after him, cautious in their stride, keeping close.

He called again, waited — silence.

"Winston, Harley, go— search!" he ordered. 

Somewhere from deep in the forest came a frantic rustle, a loud groaning creak, a strange unnatural wheeze. The dogs looked up at Will with cowering eyes. They refused to budge.

"What the—" Will muttered, then yelled again: "Hey, Franklyn!"

Same persistent silence. Will's heart struck a single harsh note of fear. He stared into the forest. From its gaping dark mouth, no reply was forthcoming.


	2. The Amber Osmothèque

"I'm sure he's fine," Zeller said, fiddling with the reigns on the donkey cart.

"Yeah," Price agreed quickly. "He'll find his own way."

"Find his own way?" Will was incredulous. Exhaustion and exasperation had left him short on patience and temper. "Franklyn's the type who'd get lost inside his own cheese shop. How the hell do you think he'll fare in the woods at night?"

"You said yourself even your dogs couldn't find him, so how do you expect us to help?" Price said, while Zeller nodded along. "Anyway, it's getting dark and we only have one torch. Plus we've got orders to fill."

These sensible arguments should have worked wonders to assuage Will's guilt over having lost the feckless Franklyn. Price and Zeller couldn't possibly succeed where Will's dogs had failed, and Jack had indeed been expecting them back hours ago. Still, the twosome's keenness to pack up the cart and head off as soon as they heard about the disappearance in the woods sat badly with Will. He thought of his dogs' strange stupor; of their stubborn refusal to leave his side or obey tracking commands while he looked desperately for his missing companion. And then there was the uneasy silence that had stalked Will and his pack all the way up to the forest's edge.

Will looked back at the black wall of trees. Along with daylight went the sultry late summer warmth, usurped by a chilly damp that crept into Will's heart and changed there into dread.

"Let's at least check if Franklyn's not turned up in town," Price said. "For all we know, he could be trotting back to Balti this very minute. Maybe we'll spot him on the side of the road?"

Will relented with a sigh. He began ushering the dogs into the cart, aiding the smaller ones by picking them up.

Meanwhile, Price and Zeller stood around and stared.

Will frowned at them. "What?"

"Mind if we see the piece?" Zeller asked.

Will resumed his dog loading duties.

"Come on, Graham," Price said. "You know how quickly stagwood gets processed once we get it in the lab. We never get to spend any time with the pure stuff."

"Fine." Will sighed and reached into his bag for the lock box which held his find. He retrieved the stone-like oval and extended it out for examination.

The two men leaned in together and stared down with enthralled expressions. Price was the first to reach out: he traced the stagwood’s broken gold veins, rubbed the smooth black surface and breathed in the scent from his fingers. "Wow," he muttered.

Zeller stuck his nose into Will's palm and inhaled greedily. "Wow is right. Aged to perfection. And look at those veins: grade A oil yield. Sure there wasn't any more?"

"I don't know," Will said dryly. "I went looking for Franklyn."

"Okay, but just so you know: Jack's definitely gonna ask."

They set off. Though he ought to have stashed it back into the safety of the lock box, Will kept the stagwood cradled in his palms. It warmed quickly against his skin and its scent, intoxicating and pure, radiated out like a beacon into the sinking twilight. Will closed his hand over it and stared out wearily at the twisting dark ribbon of road spilling out from under the rattling cart. He thought about the pestle that would soon come down on his new-found treasure, about the hot steam that would force it to express its precious oil. He saw it crumble. He saw the oil drip like white honey from the resinous ruins.

Will had tracked down a dozen stagwood fragments over the years. After each and every find, some dormant part of him would surface and plead with him to abandon his duties, to take this rare and beautiful thing home, and to never let it go.

\----

The cart crossed through the guarded gate, under the carved silver sign inscribed "The Scent-makers of Balti".

The scent-makers’ walled compound sat near the centre of town, a green, labyrinthine oasis built among the bustle of the streets and filled with specialised gardens that grew nestled between the functional buildings dedicated to distilling and macerating, blending and bottling. The perfumery’s machinery was ever hard at work, producing fragrances that sat on the pulse points and garments of thousands of men and women across the land, announcing whatever it was that human language did not wish or dare to articulate: flirtation or seduction, power or vulnerability, unattainability or access.

Will and his companions found Jack Crawford under the bright lights of the largest distillery, overseeing the processing of a shipment of blooms. The scent of geranium and sweet cicely made Will’s weary head spin.

"Well? Any luck?" Crawford demanded by way of greeting. Then added, when none of them replied: "Where the hell is Franklyn?"

It fell on Will to explain what had transpired.

"I'm sure he's fine," Crawford said when Will finished recounting his story. “Stagwood?”

Tiredness and frustration got the better of Will, and his tether snapped.

"Why is everyone acting so damn strange? The more all of you say he's fine, the more I'm convinced he's not."

The resulting silence was filled only by the bubbling and dripping of the stills. All three men looked at each other or at the floor, none of them at Will.

"We're just trying not to think the worst," Price blurted out.

"The worst being what exactly?"

Crawford sighed and made a futile gesture at Price. "Go ahead. Tell him."

Price looked uneasy. "Last month — this was before you got here — a mushroom picker found a body in the woods, to the north of Wolf Trap road."

Will shrugged. "Okay? The Balti Wood is an enormous place. People must go missing all the time. Suicides, murders."

"Suicides don't end up half way up a tree with most of their guts missing," Zeller said. "And murder victims usually get stabbed or poisoned. This was—" he seemed to shudder.

"This was a grizzly find, Will," Crawford said grimly. "The militia had never seen anything like it. Suicide ravaged by wolves was the best explanation they could come up with. But few people are convinced. Something strange attacked that poor bastard."

Will swallowed. "What— what did the body look like?" His mind was already painting a vivid picture: a bloody jagged cocoon of flesh and vegetation.

"There's no reason to think that the same’s happened to Franklyn. You're all worrying for nothing. Now: the stagwood, Will."

Will reached into his bag, biting hard on the inside of his lower lip. He hoped his reluctance to part with the lock box wouldn’t show; and he wouldn't be expected to witness the destruction of its contents.

Jack set the stagwood on a marble slab under a large magnifying glass. "It's a fine piece," he said, "Good job. But we'll need at least three others like it to complete the order from Castle Lecter. Head back in tomorrow. We’ll send someone else with you.“

Price and Zeller looked at each other apprehensively.

"Wait,” Will said. “Are you telling me you need three more pieces for a single order? This is enough stagwood to scent twenty litres. How potent does Hannibal Lecter want this stuff?"

"He's asked for a concentrated essence. We've been reserving stagwood oil to fill this particular order for years, but you know how small the yields are. You're the first tracker to find such a fine piece. So get out there and keep looking."

"You want me back in the forest, you help me find Franklyn."

Crawford glared at him for a long moment. "Fine," he said at last. "Franklyn does have a good nose. If he doesn't turn up in the morning, we'll all go looking. Now— Price, Zeller: get this piece processed. We're already behind schedule."

\---

At least Jack Crawford kept his promise.

When Franklyn's house was still empty in the morning and no one had heard from the rotund cheesemonger, they all set out together.

They took the road leading east out of town, through miles of flat moorland, and reached the outskirts of the Great Balti Wood while the day was still young. The sky was a dull uniform slab of slate grey, and a thin mist was spilling out from the vanguard of trees. Autumn arrived seemingly overnight and had stretched her damp, mossy fingers deep into the forest.

Will had left most of the dogs at home, and taken only Harley — his best people tracker. He consulted his maps and led the party down the same route he and Franklyn had followed the day before.

It took them three hours to reach the spot where Will's dogs had found the stagmares' trail. All the while they were calling out the lost man's name and watched Harley closely — in vain.

Crawford, Price and Zeller all followed Will as he led them up to the clearing. There, on Jack's orders, they scoured every boulder and crevice, but found not a single sliver of stagwood, much to Crawford's chagrin. The trail had been exhausted.

"Someone needs to hurry up and find the Wendigo tree," Zeller grumbled, still on his knees and looking. "Then we wouldn't need to rummage through rocks like idiots."

Will looked up at the mention of the tree. "Why's that?"

"Whatever these beasts are eating to make stagwood in their guts has to be at least as potent, right? Maybe the scent is identical.”

Price rolled his eyes. "Please tell me you don't believe in this tree nonsense. Perfume chemists are supposed to be scientists, not gullible simpletons who listen to fairy tales. Right, Graham?"

Will said nothing. There was no point arguing with wishful thinking and superstition.

They left the clearing empty-handed, and no closer to finding Franklyn.

"There's another path we can take," Will said. It was a longer one, the one he'd neglected to follow the day prior. It led deeper into the heart of the forest.

As soon as they descended down into the thick tangle of trees, the wood fell still. Will recognised the hush at once, and his heart sunk towards his stomach.

Harley whined against his hand. Will stooped down to her. "Come on, girl," he whispered. "You can do this. Go. Track."

A pair of frightened brown eyes gazed up at him, and then the dog was off. They followed.

The smell reached them first: the wet meat and metal reek of viscera.

It looked like nothing at first: a tree trunk thickly infested, just below the first branching limbs, with some kind of red vine.

"Fuck. Oh gods."

Which one of them said it?

A cocoon of flesh and vegetation hung suspended from the trunk.

The small round man had been strung up ten feet off the ground. Ivy had grown about his body, as if he'd been there for years. It garrotted his neck and twisted about his limbs, it forced its way into his mouth and into his open abdominal cavity to braid there with the intestines that had spilled down almost to the ground.

"Who the hell could have done something like this?" Price whispered.

"No predator has touched him. Why?" Will said, almost mechanically.

"What do you mean?" Zeller said, bewildered. "Only an animal could have done this. But how the hell did he get this high? And the ivy—"

Will couldn't tear his eyes away from the tree-bound man. What was it that he felt, beneath the tide of revulsion and dread? It was a strange sense of having been here before: a familiarity and a connection that terrified him more than the sight of the poor wretch who seemed to have been strung up, torn open and smothered in vine.

Jack broke the group's grim silence. "He can't stay here. We'll need to take him down and get him back into town.”

\---

They sat as far away as they could from the vaguely human-shaped lump they had placed in the cart and covered in cloth.

"You know it's strange," Price whispered soon after they set off, staring at the bloody shape that had once been Franklyn.

Will startled from his thoughts and blinked up at him.

"When we were taking him down," Price said, "I swear I could— I could smell stagwood. But stronger. Maybe my nose is having a nervous breakdown."

Will had smelled it too. He thought he'd been the only one. A question came to him, and he wondered why he hadn't asked it before.

"The man last month," he said. "The first one found like this. Did they ever figure out what he was doing in the woods?"

"Yeah," Price sighed. "Just another idiot looking for the Wendigo tree."

Something twisted inside Will's chest, that same sense of uncanny connection he'd felt before. He dragged his eyes away from Franklyn and looked ahead.

In the distance, beyond the outlines of the town, rose the dark spires of Castle Lecter. Will stared at the castle's amber-coloured windows.

The windows seemed to stare back.

\---

Hannibal ascended the stone spiral of the staircase leading up to the tallest tower. The dry staccato of his footsteps echoed through the castle's cavernous emptiness like bone striking bone.

The walls of the vast circular room at the summit had been cut at regular intervals with tall thin windows of pure light amber. The day was ending, and caramel blades of fading light dissected the floor to meet at the room's centrepiece: a round table occupied by dozens of carved crystal bottles.

A single chair set before the table completed the room's decor. Hannibal had permitted no other distractions to enter the space: not even music, and certainly no physical mementos. The redolent properties of objects spoiled quickly, corrupted by touch and by newly formed memories. All that the room required was Hannibal himself and the contents of the crystal bottles. The liquids held within were the keys to the palace of his mind.

Hannibal lit the lanterns between the windows one by one, until the room's domed ceiling danced with golden shadows. He approached the table and spun its top, splintering the amber light through the crystal. He considered the evening's choices.

Each bottle had been placed into a round slot carved into the table's surface. Some were sparkling and new, some peppered with dust. Some nearly spent, others barely touched. Each held beside it a label written in black ink, describing the composition within. But the true nature and power of each scent was known only to Hannibal.

Despite his precise instructions, the Scent-makers of Balti had failed Hannibal countless times over the years. But when they succeeded and produced something to his satisfaction, the results found their place at Hannibal's table.

The tabletop stopped spinning and Hannibal reached for a bottle containing one of the palest concoctions. He attached it to an atomiser nozzle and sprayed once into a circular cup carved from stagmare bone. He settled into the chair, brought the cup to his nose, closed his eyes and breathed.

Angelica root, juniper. A heart of cedar wood, pink pepper underneath. Murasaki's dressing room swam into view, then came into sharp focus. Hannibal heard the sound of a brush passing through jet black hair. He saw himself sat at his aunt's feet, heard her sing to him in her strange melodic tongue. There in his hands: her jade hairpin, carved with the snake of the Lecter herald. Hannibal had smelled it often and once pricked his finger with it until he bled. He thought of his blood drying on the tip. He thought of his blood winding into that slick black cascade.

He lingered in the cloud of memory until the scent dispersed and began to fade.

The bone cup fell away. Hannibal's eyes opened and settled on the table's single unfilled slot.

It would soon be filled. For Hannibal was a man of immaculate patience. 

The legend he'd had spun had taken firm root in the heads of the people of Balti. Sacrifices walked themselves willingly into the Great Wood.

Only a few more, and then surely he'd have what he wanted more than anything else.

Hannibal had only to wait. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scent which inspired the memory palace of Murasaki's dressing room: [Angéliques Sous la Pluie](https://www.fredericmalle.co.uk/product/19566/50174/perfume/angeliques-sous-la-pluie)


	3. Hedera Helix

"Don't you ever get bored of wandering around forests?" asked the militia-woman named Beverly Katz. "Seems kinda lonely."

"Never," Will said. "It's better than the alternative."

"The alternative being what? Human company?" Beverly grinned at him. "Sorry, but you're stuck with me for at least the next few hours."

For once, Will didn't mind too much. They were sitting on the trunk of a felled pine, near a muttering brook, paused on their way to the bloodied beech on which Franklyn had met his fate. The tops of the trees shimmered above their heads, moved by a mellow wind. The multicoloured canopy kept out the drizzle and sent down a lazy rain of dead leaves instead. Beverly had brought food, including jerky, which made her an instant and forever favourite of the dogs. Will felt oddly at peace, despite their destination. The nightmares that crowded into his head overnight had miraculously scattered.

Beverly split a bread roll neatly in two, piled it with cheese and apple slices and offered it to Will. "You wanna know something weird? Franklyn Froideveaux and Cellier, the man we found last month, were the only two nice smelling corpses I've ever had to deal with," she said. "I mean, they weren't exactly fragrant, but they had this whiff about them that was just— pleasant."

"What was that whiff like?" Will asked, although he already knew the answer. The smell she meant was unforgettable.

Beverly furrowed her brow. "It's hard to describe. Sweet but cold, if that makes sense. Like— caramel icicles. The way the moon would smell, if the moon smelled." She laughed. "Gods, that sounds so pretentious. Okay, so maybe I _can_ describe it. Didn't know I was a poet."

"We smelled it too. Price, Zeller and I."

"What the hell was it?"

"Ever smell stagwood?"

She looked at him with widened eyes. "No way. Really?"

"Brings out the poet in everyone. But no, it wasn't stagwood. Just something incredibly like it."

Beverly fell quiet, still frowning and tearing off bits of her lunch. Will had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. "Franklyn wasn't wearing a stagwood-based fragrance."

"No, I know. Doubt he could have afforded one. Is it possible though—"

"—That whoever murdered him and Cellier wore one? There's no way the scent would have transferred like that. Or lingered that long. Besides, the lab can identify every perfume ever produced in Balti. This wasn't one of ours. Wasn't even a compound fragrance." Will hesitated. He didn't want to admit it, but it was the only explanation he could fathom. "This was something natural. Something new."

Beverly swung her arm and threw an apple core, sending Zoe into a dash to find it. "Bothers you, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"The idea that the forest could have killed those men."

"There's nothing in any forest on earth that could have done this. This was human butchery. Elaborate, weird, but human. Nothing in nature hunts down perfectly edible prey without— taking its due."

"Something was taken."

Will stared at her. "What?"

Beverly chewed slowly for a moment, feeding bits of her cheese and bread to Buster. "Froideveaux was missing his left kidney. Cellier, his liver. Both organs were neatly removed."

Will suppressed a shiver. The wood around them felt suddenly dank, and a sliver darker. "Guess that makes the local flora a less likely suspect."

Beverly gave him a small smile. "I'm keeping an open mind. Let's go and see that tree first, shall we?"

They divided the last of their lunch between the dogs and started to pack up. Beverly cleaned the apple juice from her knife and slipped it back into the sheath at her hip. "Say, you don't seem particularly worried that whatever got Franklyn will come after us too."

"You're armed, I'm armed. Franklyn wasn't," Will said. "We'll be fine."

All the same, he took note of his lack of apprehension. When it came to his own life, he rarely knew where the rallying cry of courage ended and the whispering lure of self-destruction began.

Beverly laughed. "With that reckless attitude, you ought to think about joining the force."

Will said nothing. It didn't seem like the moment to unfurl to her the unpleasant details of his past, his failed attempts to serve the law. He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder, adjusted his own knife holster and whistled for the dogs to gather. The dark heart of the forest was waiting for him, and Will was ready to slip into its maze.

\---

They stood some steps away from the tall copper beech that had doomed Franklyn. Countless stems of ivy, ripped yesterday from the trunk in an effort to dislodge the gruesome catch, drooped and trailed on ground, braiding into a thick carpet of lobed leaves, some still spattered with dried blood.

A shiver was marching down the backs of Will's thighs. His throat felt tight. The same feeling that swept over him yesterday, that curious sense of connection and recollection that had followed him home and into his dreams, now clung to him just as the ivy had clung to the tree. The faintest trace of the stagwood-like scent which had wafted from Franklyn's eviscerated body climbed again into his nostrils, looking to stir up a memory Will was sure he didn't have. He wondered if Beverly smelled it too.

"Don't know what you expect to find here," he said, trying to distract himself from the uncanny sensation. He glanced over his shoulder at the dogs. They sat back from the tree, watching the two humans with cautious, alert eyes.

Beverly gave him a smirk. "Just following procedure." She knelt down and used her knife to peel a fresh section of stem from the trunk. "What are we missing here? This is just ordinary ivy, isn't it?"

"Hedera helix, common as a weed," Will said.

"No way it could have grown around the body overnight, right?"

"No chance."

"These things it uses to cling to stuff—"

"Aerial rootlets. But its primary root structure will be in the ground, somewhere nearby."

Beverly tapped the tip of her knife against her chin. "Let's try and find it."

Will gave her a level look. "Think the killer's hiding in the ground?"

"Hey, no harm in taking a sample of the root back to your boys at the lab, right? Maybe there is something weird about this particular plant."

"Fine. Just keep your gloves on. This stuff will make your skin itch."

They split up, both of them stooped and following a trail of glossy green shoots that slithered away from the tree in every direction. Strange, Will thought: the roots of the plant should have been somewhere nearby — the ivy seemed to have gone out of its way to find and smother the tree on which Franklyn had been strung up. The dogs stalked behind, no doubt puzzled by this novel task.

Will followed the twisting trail past a family of young birches, to where the ivy had climbed and clumped over a tangle of bramble and hawthorn bushes. The track disappeared into the thorny mess. Will sighed and turned to the dogs. "Great. Guess I'm about to get scratched up in the name of the law. You guys wait here."

He hacked back the first knots of bramble vines, clearing a rudimentary path for himself. The ivy had snaked behind the first blackberry vanguard and cascaded back down to the ground again. There, its leaves were larger, some withering from lack of moisture and sun. Were the roots nearby? Will cut back more branches, swearing at the thorns, and saw that the tendrils near the earth were joining up with a thicker branch. He wiggled down to kneel amongst the thicket. He inched forward, knife between his teeth, and strained to see.

There it was: the gnarly old stump of the plant, growing in the safety of its shrubby covering.

Will grinned to himself and re-sheathed his knife. "Katz!" he called out. "Found it!"

A moment passed.

"Katz!"

He rose cautiously to his feet and turned to peer out of the thorny cloud of shrubs. He tried to ignore the sudden lurch in his chest.

The whispering wind and gentle rain against the highest boughs had stopped. And the dogs— the dogs were gone.

"Fuck," Will whispered, and found that his voice was shaking. "Fuck, fuck."

He took an urgent step forward. Or at least he tried. Something had braced itself against his left boot — he couldn't quite see over the bramble knots. From somewhere down below, he heard a faint creaking sound.

He yanked his foot forward and found firm resistance. Probably just an unfortunate step into a nest of bramble vines. Had to be.

He used his knife to cut a view down to his feet, and squinted into the murk.

And there he saw it: coiling creakily around his ankle, burrowing beneath his laces, sprouting new growth before his very eyes. Hedera helix.

He barely had time to gasp. With a single harsh yank, the ivy noose about his boot sent him hurtling to the ground. He twisted desperately down to try and grab at it, but the vine tugged and dragged him through and out of the thorny undergrowth, with a force and at speeds that barely let him think. He must have been screaming — for Beverly, for his dogs, for anyone — he had to be. The forest was whizzing past his eyes, his body bumping like a rag doll over rocks and branches and all the while the clench around his leg tightened and grew and moved higher.

It felt like forever, but then the mad momentum came crashing to a violent stop. Will howled and his vision cut out from the pain. When it cleared, he saw that at least he had something to brace again: he'd slammed butt first into a tall stump. The ivy didn't relent. It tightened its grip on his leg, creaked and strained in its effort to haul him over the stump. Will knew that fierce determination, knew it well from fishing. At all costs, he was being reeled in.

By some miracle, he still had his knife. He scrambled up to his elbow and thrust the blade between the burrowing rootlets that had reached his thigh and the leather of his pants. He pried at them— and screamed: the roots had already worked their way down to his flesh and began to stake their claim.

He pulled himself up, grit his teeth and swung the knife just below his foot. He slashed and hacked and pulled and then he was free.

He scrambled to his feet and hobbled back, away from the vines that were still growing, still snaking their way back to him. His leg felt both numb and ablaze, but fear ruled over his head, and he knew he was still prey — and so he ran without aim, as best as he could, as long as it was away from the stems that slithered over the forest floor in pursuit.

He ran and ran until the rustle and creak behind him had faded. He turned once over his shoulder to see if he was safe, and went tumbling and sliding.

The skid over a stretch of slippery limestone landed him on a soft patch of moss. He got himself up again, huffing and shaking, and tried to come to his senses.

He was standing inside a shallow valley nestled by a rocky ledge. A single black oak grew in the middle, letting through its boughs the light of a now clear sky.

It was a strangely idyllic part of the wood. Will's fear took second place to awareness of omnipresent pain. He staggered towards the oak and slumped against its trunk. He touched the scratch marks on his face, the burning cuts on his leg.

He let out a shuddering sigh. "I was caught and dragged by a human-made snare," he said to himself, as loudly and clearly as he could manage.

His brain heard the explanation and rejected it whole. Will looked up through the boughs of the oak and tried to hold back tears of dread, confusion and exhaustion.

A single droplet came tumbling down through the branches and settled on his knee.

Was it raining again? But the sky above was so clear now, full of golden autumn sunshine.

Through his tears, Will blinked down at the dew-like drop. It didn't run off, as water ought to have done, and was faintly pearly. He peeled out of a glove and reached out to touch it.

Between his fingertips, it was warm and viscous. Instinct made him bring it to his nose, and it was then that he gasped.

What had Beverly said? Caramel icicles. But no— this was beyond that. This was clean and cool like metal, warm like embers, soft like young skin, electric somehow. It fizzed up through Will's nostrils, found his blood and danced its way into every vessel.

Will let out a shaky laugh and inhaled again, greedily. Every piece of stagwood he'd tracked down over the years had yielded but an echo of this, the most ecstatic scent he had ever breathed in.

"What are you? I—" he whispered. He found he was clutching his scented fingertips to his mouth and nose. And that his eyelids felt heavy.

He tried to look up. What strange rain had this been? Was there more? From where—

But the woods around him were already dimming. Will was far too giddy to ask why.

 


	4. The Scented Clutches

A firecracker of fear shot through his heart and startled him awake. He screamed and groped frantically down his legs: no trace of the strangling ivy, not even of the stinging pain it had left behind.

But his feet were bare. Where the hell were his boots? He didn't remember taking them off.

And what was that light?

Will coughed, wiped the drool from his mouth, and tried to reassemble reality into something that made sense. He was lying face down on a bed of soft damp moss. It was night — had he slept so long? — yet through the mist that had crept into the little valley where he'd found his refuge, a strange luminescence had been diffused. He struggled up to his elbows and tried to blink his surroundings into focus.

Years ago, on a dare, he'd taken a minuscule amount of belladonna. He felt then as he did now: heavy-limbed, languorous. The fog was all around him. The fog was in his head. Or was he still dreaming? Did the dreams that nagged him at home track him down in the Great Balti Wood and tackle him here at last?

His eyes adjusted to the murk. The greenish glow around him collected itself into points of light, thousands of them, a whole firmament of smeared stars. Will squinted at the lights — and started, incredulously, to giggle.

"Mushrooms," he blurted out giddily. "Guess I'm dreaming then."

Bioluminescent mushrooms had sprouted all around him, ringing the valley with their phosphorescent light and illuminating the foggy mess inside Will's head. Will laughed again and tried to stand. He wanted to reach out and touch their smooth glowing caps one by one.

But his feet wouldn't hold him. He slumped back down to the ground and tried to crawl forward instead. Shoes. Where were his shoes? Did the mushrooms steal them? He grinned deliriously to himself. Yet beneath the giddiness, the feeling wouldn't budge that something had gone terribly wrong. He tried to gather up the facts strewn about his head: Franklyn, stagwood, Beverly, dogs, ivy. Death, fear.

Fear. Another firecracker, hot and sharp, shot upwards through his chest. For here were the facts: he was alone, he was lost, in an unfathomable wood, in the dead of night. The wood around him was paralysingly silent. He was unarmed. He was prey.

Why did he sleep? How stupid that was. Did something make him? He couldn't remember.

He shut his eyes and counted to ten. Whatever had happened, he had to come to his senses now and get the hell out of here.

"Where the fuck are my shoes?" he muttered, in an attempt to set for himself some sensible course of action.

He was crawling forward, groping about in the low light, when he heard from behind him a short, dull thud. He turned in time to see one of his boots flop down to the ground.

Then down came the other.

From high above Will heard a creak. No — a whisper. He looked up.

"Oh," he gasped, and sank back onto the mossy bedding.

Hadn't he fallen asleep under a black oak? He did, he was certain of that now, more of that than of anything else. Yet there above him, crowning the luminous valley, loomed instead a tree Will could not name. He stared up, agape, at its shocking beauty.

Its scaly bark, the colour of dark amber, twisted in satin-like folds around a thick trunk that soared into the night and flared out into a network of arching boughs, glossy like coral and just as red. From this crimson dome, a gallery of smaller branches hung over Will's head like pendulous vines. And from each of those sprouted sparse lustrous leaves and long trombone-like flowers, pearly white. But it was neither the coral branches nor the white blossoms that made Will gasp.

By the strange light of the mushroom army, every branch of the tree seemed to move and sway and dance. Not by the will of a gust or breeze, but of its own volition. And each one murmured and creaked, Will thought, as if it were trying to speak.

He felt giddy with awe. "It's beautiful," he whispered, "You're beautiful, what are you, oh—"

His legs still disobeyed him, but he could inch forward on his knees, and so he did until the tree's trunk was in his reach.

He brushed the smooth bark with his fingers and found it warm. The tree seemed to sigh. The trunk recoiled from his touch, then cautiously expanded again. On next contact, Will's fingertips skidded through something cool and slick. The memory rushed back to him then: the strange drop that fell from above, the sweet moonlight scent that fizzed like static through his blood. He peeled his hand away and brought it, shaking, to his nose.

His eyes fluttered to a close. "Oh gods," he sighed and swayed back, far too fast. He was caught before he ever hit the ground.

A branch had dipped down from above and unspooled a hammock of finer offshoots to catch Will at the shoulders and at the small of his back. Where was his fear? Was he not still prey? He should have panicked. He should have leapt up to his feet and dislodged himself from the strange embrace, run for his life, run for his sanity. Instead he let himself be caught and swayed in the net of smooth branches. He was panting, groaning, hand still clutched to his nose and mouth, and each inhalation injected his bloodstream with another amplified burst of the tree's exquisite scent. That perfume — that perfume had seduced him and gone straight to his cock.

He was achingly hard. He could do nothing to help it. To fight his arousal was to swim through honey. The coral branches slithered from behind him and coiled under his arms. When they found and caressed the bare skin at his collar, Will cried out.

Sweet-scented sap painted his throat, cool and viscous — the fine pliant twigs were drenched in it. A sucking whirlpool of pleasure opened up low in Will's belly. He groped down his body and found the front of his trousers warm and soaked. He rubbed himself helplessly. He was on edge. A few more strokes, a few more slick caresses and he would come. Ecstasy was riding roughshod over his senses. He tried to tug weakly at the tendrils touching his throat, but every squeeze only served to milk more of the aromatic ooze and to send it dripping through his fingers, onto his neck, beneath the folds of his shirt, over his nipples.

Will jerked in his strange cradle. "Yes," he whined and sighed. "Yes, please, more."

The tree seemed to sigh with him. More branches were bowing down from the canopy to inspect him, the smooth long flowers bending down to stroke his cheek, his hands. And all the while the cradle beneath his back was expanding, snaking down between his thighs and—

He'd lost his footing. The branches had him, and were drawing him up. And there, at last, was the fear.

Panic seized him whole, fuelled by a sudden conviction that if he'd let this go on, he'd never be set free. He shot up from the scented clutches, ripped at the tendrils that had clung to his skin and found his footing at last. The branches retreated upwards. Will thought he heard them hiss. He didn't look back. He snatched up his boots and ran, trampling the luminous fungi, at full speed and in full terror, outwards into darkness.

He ran, as mindlessly and blindly as he had before, until exhaustion caught up with him and he slumped, panting, head foggy with residual arousal and a peculiar dark bliss that was unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

Reality descended at last, along with a bone-shaking chill. Through the trees, a cold moon shone down on Will. Nothing had remained in the distance of the greenish glow that had lit the valley and the strange thing that grew and twisted within it.

Will looked down to his right hand: it had spasmed closed around something small. By the light of the moon, he pried it open and peered inside to find a tiny broken segment of a red twig.

He shut his hand again quickly, before its scent could reach him.

He had no words for what had happened. Nor did he know if he'd make it out of the wood alive. But if he did, then only one thing sat certain inside the raging chaos of Will's head.

He would tell no one about what he'd found. Not Jack, not the militia, and not some damn rich nobleman in a castle. The tree would be his secret, his alone.

\---

By the light of a hundred candles, under a vaulted ceiling painted midnight blue and gold, Hannibal dined alone. It was a fine evening. The devilled kidneys he had prepared for himself paired well with the currant and oak notes of the vintage in his glass, and his mind was pleasantly occupied with thoughts of his forthcoming dinner party.

The cream of Balti society would soon flock to his doors and Hannibal, the absent but gracious host, would ply them with refined dishes, choice wines and exquisite music. And all the while he would watch, learn, amuse himself and, above all else, scent for his next subject.

There was much to plan. But first, time had come, as it did once a month, to check on the progress of Hannibal's most ambitious project.

His meal finished, he made his way through the twisting corridors of his home towards the steps which sunk into the castle's depths. There, directly and far below the amber room atop Hannibal's tower, was an empty cellar; and in its centre, a black pit.

Torch in hand, Hannibal descended the last few steps and approached the pit’s edge. He peered inside.

“Good evening,” he said with a smile.

Something stirred and slithered upwards from the depths. By the light of the torch, smooth reddish roots spilled from the pit like a den of faceless snakes.

Hannibal tilted his head back and scented the air. How satisfied the inhabitants of the pit seemed tonight, he thought with pleasure, how full of promise of the scent they carried. And no wonder: after all their recent conquests, they were well fed. With each visit Hannibal paid them, they came closer to giving him what he wanted. Now he would take this month's sample and gauge his progress.

He knelt at the edge of the pit and extended his hand out. A smooth scion unravelled itself from its mates and slithered obligingly into his palm. Hannibal caressed it briefly before reaching for the knife in the pocket of his cloak. He made his incision and waited for the first droplet to bead.

There it was: that silky, pearly blood. Another dip into his pocket, and Hannibal retrieved a small silver wand with which to collect the drop. He gathered it up onto his implement, brought it to his nose, closed his eyes and breathed in.

His hand jerked away. His eyes snapped open. He staggered back and stared into the blackness of the root-smothered pit.

Then he turned and walked away quickly, neglecting to pick up the knife he had left behind.

Half-way up the stairs, he paused.

It couldn't be. Impossible. Some mistake, a temporary pollution. A fault of memory, but surely not of nature. Hannibal looked for a long time at the wand he still held in his hand. Reluctantly, he let it drift up to his nose and closed his eyes once more.

But there was to be no denying what had occurred. All the precarious chemistry he'd been assembling for years had been altered beyond recognition. And in the most secret room of Hannibal's memory stood a wild-eyed, dark-haired stranger.


	5. Aide-memoire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look. In this chapter, Will gets fucked by a tree, OKAY? If this isn't your thing, leave now. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit plot-heavy but we get tree filth and some BREATHTAKING art by @TheSeaVoices at the end.

The moon had set. The forest sunk whole into the perfect void of night. A cacophony of screeching and howling filled the blackness in Will's dreaming head. It sounded as if every creature in the wood was fleeing for its life.

Then, from somewhere far off, came a great thudding cascade. Something was coming, unstoppable, thundering towards Will.

He was blind, filled with terror. If he didn't wake up and run, he would surely be trampled. But sleep kept him inert. Closer now, those hooves, so close that Will recognised the breadth and boom of their stride. It was unmistakable. Stagmares.

As great as Will's fear was, the fear in the stagmares' gallop was greater. The herd reached him. He felt their enormous bodies rush over him, smelled their panicked animal musk, heard their antlers, tall as a man's skeleton and just as bone-smooth, tearing through the highest boughs.

What were they fleeing from? What could have—

Fear jerked Will awake. The harsh light of morning stared down at him through the branches. He scraped off his blanket of damp dead leaves and examined himself: so he'd survived the night, body in tact, though perhaps not mind.

How much of it all had been dreams, and how much reality?

He got to his feet. Every inch of him creaked and complained and shook with a chill, but he had to get moving. To stand any chance of surviving, he had to find water. The forest around him was silent, aloof. It didn't want him.

He was reaching down to re-lace his boots when his right hand gave a spasm. The twig — he still held it, hadn’t let it go, not even in the night. Without opening his palm, he tucked the tiny treasure into the safety of his pocket.

“Not a dream then,” he muttered.

As if he could deny it. Traces of the tree's scent still clung ghost-like to his clothes and skin. Its sweetness made his heart twist with the ache of a forlorn child — and how well Will knew that ache from his boyhood. Fear had made him run from the tree's caressing branches. He longed for their embrace now, and felt himself a coward.

Before he set off in earnest, something caught his eye: all around him, fresh imprints had been put into the forest floor, vast and distinct, each one shaped like two teardrops. So he hadn't dreamt the stagmares either. They had passed him in the night, spooked by some unseen horror.

Will closed his hand around the twig in his pocket and started on his aimless trek. He followed the ascending sun, sickly behind its veil of grey clouds.

Luck smiled on him. Before long, he reached the edge of a stream. He drank greedily. Then, despite the chill, he peeled out of his jacket and shirt and rinsed them both well. If he was found, he wanted no one to catch the tree's scent. It belonged to him alone.

He trudged on, following the stream. He shrugged off cold and hunger. They were easier to ignore than the ache that gnawed at his heart each time his hand felt for the tiny warm treasure in his pocket.

The sun rose in the sky and, by degrees, began to dry his clothes.

Around midday, he spotted a familiar object at the water's edge and let out a cracked laugh of disbelief: it was his satchel.

Inside were small provisions of food, a map, a compass. But the first thing Will reached for was the lock box he used to carry stagwood. He drew the twig from his pocket and stashed it inside.

Moments later, he heard a chorus of excited barks.

\---

The pack bounded towards him, ahead of Beverly Katz and what must have been her search party. Holding back tears of relief, Will let the dogs tackle him to the ground. His head was quickly smothered in lashings of affectionate dog tongues.

"We thought you were done for," Beverly said, striding up to him. "What the hell happened, Graham?"

The four militia men and women in Katz's company sized Will up with faintly pitying glances. He must have looked like hell, like something wild.

"Got lost," Will said, and it almost didn't sound like a lie. "Sorry. Glad you're okay. And the dogs."

Beverly helped him up from the swarming puddle of canine delight. "I guess even the best trackers lose their way sometimes, right?" she said without conviction, scanning his still-damp shirt, his torn trousers. She nodded to the dogs. "You confused the hell out of your seven closest friends. Even they couldn't find you."

“They found me now, haven’t they?" Will scrambled for a change of topic. "Any— any luck finding those ivy roots?"

"Yep. Found them in a hedge not too far from Franklyn's tree. Took a sample back to your boys at the perfume lab."

"And?" Will said, stroking each dog head in turn and trying to sound breezy. So Katz had found the same ivy that had attacked him — yet she'd escaped it unscathed.

"It's common ivy all right," she said. "But something's been messing with it."

Will's hand drifted into his bag to clutch at the lock box inside. "Something?"

"Price and Zeller say there's evidence another plant had latched onto its roots."

"Another plant— a parasite?"

"That's what they think."

Will frowned. Nothing was adding up. "A parasite feeds on its host. It doesn't make it grow uncontrollably, and it sure as hell doesn't make it drag people—"

"Hang on," Katz interrupted. "What do you mean: drag?"

Will stammered. "Just a guess. If the ivy grew around Franklyn's body, then it's possible that it snatched him and hauled him up that tree, right?"

"Possible, yeah," Katz said slowly. Will could sense her doubt. From nearby, one of the militia women let out an impatient cough. "Anyway, we're gonna get going. You're welcome to tag along or you can go back with Cray here." Beverly nodded to one of her crew.

"Get going? Where—"

"No offence, Graham, we're sure glad you're in one piece, but we didn't come all the way out here just to find you. We're heading back to Franklyn's tree. Going to try and find whatever it was that messed around with the roots of that ivy. Might give us more clues."

A sudden shiver passed through Will. He hoped it didn't show. "You're all armed, right?"

Beverly flashed the knives at her hip, but gave him a quizzical look. "Now you're worried? You weren't yesterday." Before Will could form an answer that would pass for the truth, she was setting off, consulting maps held open by one of her companions.

"Katz," Will called to her. "The roots you took back to Price and Zeller. Did they— did they smell like anything?"

"Yeah," she said with a grin. "They smelled better than you. Go home, Graham. Have a bath. I'll see you around."

\---

Beverly's man was good enough to make the long journey back to Will's house, miles beyond Balti, and to leave Will on his doorstep without too many questions.

The short autumn day was quickly fading. Will lit a fire, fed the dogs and himself, then settled near the hearth.

Like the stagmares through the night, wild thoughts galloped through his head. With a pounding heart, he reached for his bag. He pulled out the lock box and set it in his lap.

"What are you?" he whispered to the thing inside, half-expecting a reply. "And what do you know?"

The Wendigo Tree. Will was certain that he had found the tree of Balti legend. Or had it found him? A rope of dread tugged at the back of his mind: the proximity of his discovery to the eviscerated men, to the corrupted ivy. All of it coiled together, just as the smooth warm branches had coiled about his body.

Those branches. How warm they had been, how gentle. With shaking fingers, Will lifted up the box.

Solitude and otherness had given shape to his life. In the woods, he had always felt least outcast and alone. The tree had reached out to him from the dark heart of wilderness, yielded up its scent, gave him pleasure. It showed him where he belonged.

He held his breath as he let the lock box lid snap open. The scent rose up to him like a discharge of cool sparks.

He ran his fingers over the coral-like wood inside. It was still faintly slick and warm, and Will felt warm in turn. The memory of what the tree had done to him came rushing back, irresistible and vivid. Every touch of his fingers wrought from the sprig another waft of the erotic fragrance.

In the forest, he'd grown frightened. Here, he was safe. No one to judge him for what he was about to do.

He slid down in his chair and brought the open lock box to his nose. He loosened the ties on his trousers and reached inside.

Eyes pinched shut, fist around his cock, mouth open to collect lungfuls of that caramel moonlight scent. One dizzying rush of blood from his heart to his lap and he was achingly hard. He started to stroke himself, roughly and too fast. Precome dripped down his fingers. He remembered the feeling of the sweet sap on his skin like slick, sensuous rain. Those branches, snaking over him, searching for more of his body to pleasure...

He came with a sobbing cry, hips off the chair. Body and breath still shaking, he slammed the lock box shut.

Dread followed ecstasy — a new kind of dread. How, if ever, would he find the tree again? He had to go back. He _would_ go back. He would know the tree, understand it. And he'd let himself be known in turn.

The next morning, he ignored the note that arrived from Jack Crawford summoning him back to the Scent-makers to explain his absence. He packed his things, left extra food for the dogs, and set out alone.

By late afternoon, he was back at the stream where he'd found his satchel. He would camp here, his tiny twig treasure in hand. He would wait for a sign.

\----

Moonlight smeared itself against the castle's amber windows and found Hannibal in his bed chamber, stood before a small table that held a glass jar. Inside the jar was a thin silver wand. And on the wand's silver tip glistened a thickening drop of pearly sap.

Some moments earlier, Hannibal had stood before the dark pit in his cellar, watching the roots within writhe wildly. A strange ecstasy had seized them. They'd hardly taken notice of Hannibal's presence. Were they feeding? On what? Hannibal did not expect them to feed, not yet, not so soon. He milked from them the evening's sample and left them to their silent dance.

Since yesterday evening, storm clouds had gathered in Hannibal's mind, pregnant with thunder and hailstones. He raged silently at his own uncertainty. He'd hardly slept. The vision of the dark-haired stranger had invaded his thoughts.  
  
He had never met the man — of this at least he was certain. For while memories betrayed others, they had never betrayed Hannibal. He had worked hard to master his recollections and preserved them like insects in resin for perpetual examination.

Hannibal knew himself. He knew his past. By extension, he thought he knew the tree.

The tree had sprung from the wreckage of his childhood. He had nourished it, fed its dark appetites well and shared in its feasts. He'd excused its indiscretions. And all the while the tree's scent had grown stronger, more refined, bringing Hannibal ever closer to peeling back the murky veil of recall that barred him from reclaiming his most precious memories.  
  
He'd been so close. But then, at last night's sampling, the tree infected his inner world with an unsolicited image. It had shown him not an aspect of his own mind — but something it itself must have experienced. This, at least, was Hannibal's theory.

His fingers traced over the domed glass lid of the jar and toyed with the handle. If he was to eradicate the pollution from the tree, he had to understand its source: to know the man who'd appeared to him through the scent.

He lifted the glass lid and brought the sap-soaked silver to his nose. He let his eyes fall to a close and his nostrils flare.

A milky green veil descended. Hannibal began to drift, seemingly forward, through countless gauzy layers, until the last of them lifted to reveal an image lush and vivd like a painted silk scarf:  
  
The tree and the dark-haired stranger, utterly entwined — as only lovers could be.  
  
\---

He peeled out of his boots. The moss was cool and soft beneath his bare feet. The milky green luminescence of the valley lit his way.

Half-drunk with triumph and anticipation, he stepped in close.

"I found you," he murmured. "Or did you find me?"

He pressed against the red creased satin of the bark, first his palms, then his cheek. The trunk yielded to his touch. Will's arms outstretched, but could barely encircle half its circumference.

He sighed and nuzzled closer. He could feel the quick hollow thud of his heartbeat against the trunk, knocking against it as if to be let in. He listened to the symphony of pleased rustles and creaks coming from above. They seemed to welcome him.

Something moved through his hair, a breeze faint as breath. Something brushed against the back of his neck. Will gasped and spun about. A single fine tendril had suspended itself before him. Will reached to loosen his collar, but there was no need: the inquisitive scion swung closer and wormed itself beneath his shirt. It slid over his torso like a lover's palm.

A quick flutter moved Will's chest, and the branch moved with it. It snaked down to his belly, then wiggled up again to shrug Will's shirt from his shoulders. Another dipped down to join it, and then another.

Two delicate shoots spiralled around Will's nipples and tightened there, and tugged hard. The third one, the thickest, dove down, pushed itself beneath his belt and, like a smooth warm spring, coiled itself about his cock.

What noises was he making? Pleas or cries or moans? Will was lost to them. He barely sounded human. He thrust himself into the tree's all-consuming caress. Head thrown back against the trunk, he reached up to clasp blindly at the branches. He tried to grip them, but his hands skid on warm slickness. And all the while the tree's ecstatic scent perfumed the air and dazzled Will's skin and sizzled in his blood.

More branches were bending down to touch him, some bare, some feathered with leaves, some heavy with long semi-translucent blossoms. Will hardly noticed as they stripped him. Deliriously, he watched as the dextrous tip of a vine flicked itself over and over against the tip of his cock. Like a long fine tongue, it dipped into the slit to lap him up, to taste him.

A braided tangle of branches slid beneath his thighs and stopped there, as if waiting for permission. "Come on," Will hissed, and gave them a firm tug. "Do it."

His wish was understood. In the span of a single breath, he was airborne. The motion shook the highest boughs and sent a spatter of fresh sap over his belly, chest, thighs.

He was suspended, floating through a dream. His limbs rolled helplessly through the air. Pearly rivulets streamed down his body, leaving streaks of shivering pleasure in their wake. Branches danced about him wildly, claiming every inch of skin. One strayed down beneath him and slid between his cheeks, against his hole. It was so warm, so soaking wet.

Will gasped and kicked at the air. "Please, yes, I want it—" He barely knew what he was asking for. No human had done this to him.

The branch withdrew, as if uncertain. Will flailed after it, awkward in midair. He grabbed for another like it. "This," he whispered. "Look, like this."

He open his lips wide and wrapped them around the sap-slicked wood. The taste shocked him, assaulted his senses. He let out a muffled cry, and started to suck, full of feverish greed. The branch writhed ecstatically in his throat, flooding it, feeding him mouthful after mouthful of its thick ambrosial milk.

He had scaled beyond the pleasures of an ordinary orgasm. He was climbing to some absurd and unknown heights. Would he die like this? But still there was more to be done to him. He would let it all happen. A slick pressure pressed again against his hole. He wanted it. He pushed back — and then he was being stretched with ease and speared deeply and fucked onto a fat branch that found some place just inside him that shook his body with bursts of electric agonies.

His vision was cutting out from overload of sensation. Had he come? More than once? Mouth still full, he strained to look down the line of his body.

He heard himself let loose a rough, broken groan. A long white flower had replaced the tendril around his cock. Its diaphanous petals enclosed the shaft whole and sucked at him, hot and wet and tight like a cunt.

He had none of himself to spare. The tree had him whole. The luminous green world, the whole wild upside-down world whirled away from Will and vanished, replaced by the pure white void of an all-consuming climax.

When he came to, he was laughing weakly to himself, still swimming through the air, aloft in the gentle cradle made from the loving branches of the Wendigo tree.

He'd never been so happy. He would sleep here now, he told himself, suspended in bliss and feeling utterly cared for. The real world be damned — its mundane horrors could wait.

 


	6. One of Jack Crawford's

Afterwards, Hannibal couldn't stop pacing. He shuttled from one cavernous room to another, down mirror-hung hallways, up and down swirling staircases. His own home had become a maze.

Hannibal's mind had always been an orderly place. It allocated its resources efficiently, permitting several threads of planning and action to operate at once. When the vision of the tree amorously entangled with the dark-haired stranger gushed down the corridors of Hannibal's mind, it left disorder in its wake. An image of the man's face, luminous in its ecstasy, vandalised every wall in pearly frescoes of sap and semen. It left Hannibal feeling far too much. He decided that this excess of feeling must have been anger.

A plan was required. First, Hannibal would expunge the obscene flood from his mind. But how? Should he distract himself with trivia? Or dose himself with a different scent from his collection and thus summon a more evocative memory? No — he could think of nothing that would compete. But he could and would find the answer to this calamity in the place that always brought him respite and clarity.

His kitchens. By the time he reached them, the heat of his anger had turned scorching. His face felt hot, and his hands itched for action. He searched through his cabinets. He found vinegar and epsomite. He found a large glass jug. He began to prepare the mixture.

Made in sufficient quantity, the solution would wither the roots of the disobedient plant and thus put an end to its unscheduled adventures.

It would also destroy years of meticulous work — for good.

Hannibal paused in his stirring and tapped the long metal spoon against the edge of the jug, sending the crystalline sound up to the vaulted ceiling. Perhaps there was another way. Didn't he promise himself to know the mysterious seducer who had spoiled his most treasured possession? After all, the man could hold an answer to Hannibal's longest experiment.

There was something to be gained from all this. Didn't Hannibal always find a way to benefit from the chaos inflicted on him by nature and circumstance? Wasn't the tree, after all, the very manifestation of that talent?

He settled in a leather armchair in the corner of the kitchens, steepled his fingertips and closed his eyes. The vision rushed back at once, less vivid without the immediate effect of the tree's sap, but still very much alive. This time Hannibal would not indulge the chaos it sought to wreak. He fortified himself against its undeniable allure.

He applied himself. There were important details to observe: the man's discarded clothing, for example, consisted of plain, sturdy wear suited for the outdoors. No weapons or traps to be seen. Not a hunter then. Who, if not a hunter, ventured sensibly dressed and with a sense of purpose so deep into the heart of the forest? Here, thrown onto the mossy earth, was a telltale clue: the distinct leather satchel of a tracker.

Hannibal opened his eyes and smiled triumphantly at the silent kitchen.

"Of course," he murmured to the cabinets, to the unlit ranges, to the gleaming knives. "He's one of Jack Crawford's."

He rose and approached the counter. His anger was receding, replaced by satisfaction at having found a way forward. He swirled the bottle which contained the poison.

Diluted further, the solution would not destroy the roots. But the bite of salt and the burn of vinegar would make Hannibal's tree very hungry indeed.

\----

The scent of iris and heliotrope was drifting under the door to Jack's office. A batch of "Firefly", the Scent-makers' second most popular fragrance, was being mixed somewhere in the building. Will barely registered the heady cocktail. All his senses were still in the forest, in the hazy green valley where grew his strange, guilty secret.

He gripped the armrests of the chair he'd been ordered into, and tried to keep from sliding off. Every inch of his body ached. Aftershocks of pleasure rattled through him for hours after waking, and only just began to subside on his hitchhike back to Balti. They'd stopped entirely by the time he'd reached the Scent-makers' gates, replaced now only by longing and dread.

All through his trek back into town, he kept on thinking: _I should have stayed_. It was so easy to picture himself, running away to live in the secluded depths of the forest, surviving on game and berries, and on the tree's ambrosial sap. No one would ever find him. And if they did, Will would protect the tree. And the tree— would do what, exactly?

Will told himself that he came back to receive Jack's chiding out of some sense of obligation to Franklyn. He'd left the little man behind, after all. But an uglier truth sat bitterly in the back of his throat.

By now, Jack ought to have heard from Beverly Katz. If she'd found something that connected the murders to the tree, Will had to know. Visions of the two dead men, gutted, vine-tied and strung up, sat behind his eyes like a violent parody of what had been done last night to own body. He saw himself again suspended in a nest of smooth caressing branches and suppressed a shiver.

Jack Crawford's face moved itself back into Will's periphery, full of displeasure.

"Will." Crawford was reduced to rapping his fingers against his desk. "Will!"

Will jerked, gripped the chair tighter, and tried to straighten up. He stared across the desk at Crawford.

"I said: getting lost is no excuse," the displeased face thundered. "You were meant to help the militia track down whatever or whoever butchered these men. Why didn't you stay with Katz after she found you?"

"She didn't need me," Will half-lied.

"Oh really? I'll be sure to ask her about that when she's back. Meanwhile the woods are off limits on the militia's orders, and this house is without access to our most valuable ingredients. Do you know what that means to our bottom line?"

Will's stomach lurched with a fresh wave of unease. "Katz— you mean she's not back yet?"

"Probably set up camp overnight. I'm arranging for you to head back into the woods, even if it means giving you armed escort. Hannibal Lecter is due an update on his order. You need to find more stagwood before the week is out, otherwise we'll look like we've made next to no progress."

Will grimaced on hearing that damn name again: Hannibal Lecter. His head was beginning to throb violently, as if the worst hangover of his life was descending down on him. Something wasn't adding up. Pieces of a broken mosaic sat lodged in Will's brain and he couldn't piece them together to make out the picture.

"What do you know about the Wendigo tree?" Will asked, rubbing at his temples.

Jack leaned back in his chair. "You want to tell me why you're suddenly in the mood to talk about old fairy tales?"

"Price told me that Cellier, the first man found strung up in the woods, was looking for the tree."

"Apparently. That's what he told his family. So?"

"And according to Zeller, those old fairy tales say that stagmares feed on the Wendigo tree to make stagwood. Franklyn thought that, too. Must be plenty of idiots out there who think the tree is a shortcut to getting the real stuff, right? Find the tree, find a stagwood substitute, get rich quick."

"Still don't see what this has to do with—"

"Do you believe the tree exists, Jack?"

Jack scoffed. "Of course I don't."

" _Is_ it an old fairy tale? Did you first hear about it as a child?"

Jack eyed him for a moment, brow etched with a deep scowl. "No. Nothing like that. No one knows for sure where those stories first started. I first heard about the tree years ago, at one of Lecter's dinner parties. Speaking of which, that reminds me. He's hosting another one this Sunday. Looks like you're going."

Will lost his grip on his chair. "I'm— what?"

"The invitations were delivered this morning. He wants everyone there, including the trackers."

"I can't— there's no way. I'm not going."

"Out of the question. I expect you to be there, just like the rest of the team. You can bring company."

Will stared past Jack, out the window, into the Scent-makers' manicured botanical gardens. A thick silence filled the room. The more Will's head ached, the more the broken picture in his head assembled itself together. It was almost clear now, and it hurt him to look at it.

Outside Jack's office, footsteps were approaching down the hall, fast, almost running.

"Jack?" Will said hoarsely. "Did you offer anyone a bounty to find the Wendigo tree?"

Jack shot him a furious stare and opened his mouth to speak.

"Did you offer one to Cellier?"

The door rattled with an urgent knock, then Zeller's head appeared.

"Katz is back," he said, panting. "She doesn't look happy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Firefly", the perfume mentioned in this chapter, is inspired by L'Eau D'Hiver, designed by Jean-Claude Ellena. I've been wearing it a lot this winter.


	7. That Poor Creature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: This chapter refers to harm to and death of an animal

A rose garden grew in the main courtyard of the Scent-makers’ compound, a twisting maze of shrubs cultivated for their exceptional fragrance. The autumn blooms were at their best: flame reds, whites blushed with pink, sunset yellows blazing under a drizzle-swollen sky. 

They found Katz at the edge of the garden. She looked tired, and her coat and boots were spattered with mud. She'd come alone. 

"Well, any news?" Crawford demanded without a greeting. Will hoped his distaste didn't show. 

"Nice to see you too, boys," Katz said. She reached into her coat and produced something wrapped in linen, barely bigger than her palm. She handed it to Zeller. "Any of you recognise this?"

Will craned over Jack's shoulder to get a look. When Zeller finished unbundling the delivery, Will's breath stalled in his lungs. 

Resting on the cloth, amidst a smattering of dirt, was a twisted fragment of root. Reddish. Smooth like satin. Or skin. 

Will's fingers spasmed at his sides. He needed to touch — to steal. To keep Zeller from touching it.

Had Katz found the tree? And if so, what had she done to it? Will wished they were alone, so he could pry the answers from her, fast. 

Zeller examined the root. "No idea. I've never seen anything like it. All I can tell you is that it came from something large: a shrub or tree. Could be some foreign species. Graham?"

Will shook his head. His jaw felt tight. 

Zeller held the root up to his nose for a sniff. Will almost flinched, but Zeller only asked: "Is this what I think it is?"

"We'll try and identify it for you," Crawford interrupted. "Now, when can we expect the woods to re-open for tracking?"

Beverly seemed to reign in an exasperated sigh. "Our advice remains the same: stay away until we know what's behind those deaths. But we can't police the whole forest. It might help you to know that one of my men was attacked there yesterday." She turned to Zeller. "It is what you think it is. We found this tangled in the roots of the ivy that grew around Franklyn Froideveaux's body. Looks like you were right: it's some kind of parasitic plant. If you could try and identify—"

"What happened to your man?" It was Will's turn to interrupt. He tried not to sound desperate.

Beverly gave him a level stare. "He got snagged and dragged by the ivy. We all watched it happen. By the time we caught up with him and cut him free, the rootlets had already burrowed under his skin. He may lose the leg.”

They fell silent, all eyes on the twisted thing in Zeller's hand, weird and exquisite among the commonplace beauty of the roses.

"Whatever the hell this thing is," Katz said grimly at last, pointing at the root, "it could be what’s turning ordinary climbing plants into— into weapons." 

"A network of influence," Will whispered under his breath. No one paid him any mind.

"And the plant itself?" Crawford asked. 

"Couldn't find it. We dug for hours and found traces of the root everywhere, deep underground. But not its source. This thing is everywhere. And nowhere. It's like— it’s spread itself under the entire forest."

Zeller covered up the strange twisting wood, quickly, as if he no longer wanted to look at it. "That's outlandish. Some plants are parasitic, some carnivorous. Hell, there are plants that can move. But this thing— what does it want?"

"Your guess is as good as mine,” Katz said. “All I know is that right now our best lead is to find the plant this root belongs to. We've got nothing else to go on."

Before Will could lay his claim to the linen bundle in Zeller's possession, Crawford was extending his hand for good-byes. “Then we’ll do our utmost to help. Your specimen is going to our lab for analysis. Will is at your disposal in helping you find this shrub, or tree, or whatever the hell this thing is. Assuming he can continue tracking for stagwood."

Will opened his mouth to protest, but Jack was already on his way back to the distillery, Zeller in tow, and Will was left in the garden with Katz. 

She waited until the others were out of earshot. “Walk with me?”

They followed the winding gravel path into the garden. The drizzle thickened over their heads and left fat glistening droplets on the heaving blooms. Will stared out beyond the maze of flowers, past the walls of the compound and Balti’s varied cityscape, to the distant shape of Hannibal Lecter's castle with its staring amber windows.

Katz paused near a showy shrub of purple roses and leaned in for a smell. "You look about as rosy as I feel, Graham."

"It's been a rough few days," Will said blandly. 

She gave him a faint smile and screwed the tip of her boot into the fine limestone fragments under her feet. "Look, I'm gonna be plain. When we found you in the woods, you were concerned for my crew. You checked if we were armed. I'm grateful for that. But you knew what that ivy was going to do, didn't you? It happened to you, too. Why the hell didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't think you'd believe me. I could barely believe it myself," Will said. The lies were so easy to come by now, now that the tree had been threatened with discovery. “Got a question for you.”

“Fine.”

"Ever hear of the Wendigo tree?" 

The segue had worked on Crawford. It was sure to work on Katz. 

"Sure. How could I not? Most people in Balti have heard something. Cellier went into the woods looking for it. Some mythical tree of riches?"

"Not riches. Stagwood. People think the tree makes something like stagwood. That's why they go looking for it." 

She eyed him for a moment. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that stagwood is what your two dead men have in common." Will licked his lips. He could do this. He was on his way. He thought of the sap that flowed richly from the tree's smooth blossoms and branches, the same way words were flowing out of him now. "I've only just found out from Jack that the legend of the tree is no legend. It's an old rumour, first heard at one of Hannibal Lecter's infamous dinner parties. And no one wants to find stagwood more than Hannibal Lecter."

"I still don't see— what does that have to do with the murders?" 

"Have we all lost our minds, Beverly? What's more likely? That some hitherto unknown plant is possessing ivy and convincing it to kill and string up human victims? Or that some madman looking to get rich on stagwood is setting up elaborate snares?”

Katz was frowning, picking idly at a half-faded rose. Will must have been close. 

"To eliminate competition," she said.

"Exactly. Madness meets greed. That strange root you found could have had nothing to do with any of this."

"All right." She was relenting. "Back to Lecter. You said no one wants to find stagwood more than him."

"He's the reason Jack hired me. He's been after the purest stagwood extract for years.” Will hesitated for a moment. “And guess who's just been invited to one of those notorious dinner parties."

She raised her eyebrows. "You are going to Hannibal Lecter's party."

"I know. I'm as shocked as you are." Will snapped a single flower from its vine, fingers catching on the thorns. He extended it out to Katz. "Wanna come along?" 

She laughed and took the rose. "Do I? Hell yes! I could use a good party. And I've always been curious about the guy, you know? Such a mystery."

"Maybe we can find out who started all those Wendigo tree rumours," Will offered. "And who made idiots traipse about the deepest woods in search of their fortunes."

Katz sniffed her rose and gave Will one of her careful looks. "You think it was Lecter himself, don't you."

"I don't know." Will said, this time sincerely. The distant amber windows caught his eye again. "Meanwhile, Crawford wants me to help you find this tree— shrub. Whatever it is. When do you want to pick up the search again?"

"Not yet," Katz said, and Will held back his relief. "I'll wait until the Scent-makers come back with their lab results. We'll need to be more careful going forward. I don't want anyone else losing a leg."

They found shelter under the compound gates just as the spitting rain thickened into a downpour. Katz' mood seemed to drop again. She snapped the stem off her rose and tucked it into the lapel of her mud-spattered coat. "Graham," she said, "there is something else."

"Yeah?" 

"On our trek back this morning, we found a dead stagmare." 

Will blinked. Shook his head. "That's— incredibly rare."

"I know. Something slaughtered it." 

Will stuttered. He remembered his dream— it hadn't been a dream. The black heart of the forest, the unshakable sleep, the herd of terrified giants, spooked by some unseen horror, thundering over his head. The same fear was galloping at him now, head on.

"That's ridiculous," he whispered. "Stagmares have no predators, they die of disease and—" he stopped. He didn't want to ask: were there vines nearby?

Katz sighed. "That poor, beautiful creature. Torn up and gutted, just like our dead men."

\----

He wasn't going to stay away. He went home, tended to his dogs, then was on his way again. His bones felt brittle with tiredness and his skull swollen with pain. Being under the open sky, without the canopy of the forest, felt oppressive. 

The fear, the thrill, the promise of pleasure and comfort — all lured him back in equal measure. An invisible red twine had coiled about his heart and was tugging him back into woods. He would go back. Even if it meant coming across the dead stagmare. 

Years ago, an old tracker he'd trained with took Will to see a dead 'mare. The man crawled inside the animal's open belly. He emerged covered in blood and viscera, like a newborn. He held out a handful of thick black resin. 

"See this horrible goop? That's fear, Will. That's what grows inside them when they're frightened. Leave it long enough, and this tar turns into stagwood. More precious than diamonds and gold." 

It lay, as he expected, on the path that lead back to the tree. An enormous mound of glossed, black feather-fur under a thin blanket of fallen leaves. When its huge bulk was toppled, it felled nearby trees. In the fading light of day, the huge red eye stared out at Will from the void of death. Its split, bloody belly was criss-crossed with countless vines of perfectly ordinary ivy. 

Will dropped to his knees beside the head of the gentle beast. He reached up his arms, wrapped them around one mossy antler, and wept. 

\---

Night fell. Will stood again in the luminous green belly of the valley, in a perfume cloud of caramel moonlight. 

"You smell different tonight," he said by way of greeting. "Stronger."

Long scions uncoiled from the tree's lowest branches and stretched out excitedly to greet him. They caressed his cheek, the line of his neck. They slid down his back to embrace him. Was he being drawn towards the trunk? Or going of his own volition? 

Will shivered and shook — but went. He let out a broken breath as he found himself pressed whole against the silky lacquer of the bark, just beginning to bead with the sweet milky sap. 

"It was you, wasn't it?" he whispered. "You killed it. It was always you." 

He was held closer in return. Another moment, and he was floating again in the tree's tender embrace, safe from the world. 

"Doesn't matter," he sighed, half-drunk already. "Don't worry. I won't let them find you."


	8. The Portrait and the Pit

Will woke up laughing. He swatted at the leaves tickling his eyelids.

"Hey. Stop that."

The leaves retreated, dragging caresses through his hair. Will opened his eyes.

Above the labyrinth of the tree’s coral-coloured boughs, the black canvas of night had thinned to the deep cobalt blue of early dawn. A cradle of branches was swaying Will's naked body high over the luminous valley below. The shimmering music of the leaves was stirring him awake.

Will stretched and sighed, lungs full of sweet, stagwood-like scent. He smoothed his hands over the vines coiled loosely about his belly and found they had sprouted new shoots overnight.

He craned his neck up to look down the line of his body. "Look at all this," he muttered, oddly pleased. He fondled the delicate leaves curling about the shoots. "You've had a busy night."

As if in answer, half a dozen young branches swung down from above, one after another, and suspended themselves before Will's face. Several new buds hung from each one in little bundles of glossy white petals.

Will laughed again, this time at the tree's blatant display. So that's why he was woken up so early.

"Wanted to show me, huh?" he said and drew one branch to his lips. He kissed the tender buds one by one. "Thank you. They're beautiful."

He fidgeted himself to full comfort and shut his eyes. He shivered a bit, remembering the pearly flowers taking turns in the night to wrap themselves around his cock, slathering him in their nectar, sucking from him climax after climax, as if Will’s biological need for recovery had been superseded by the force of the tree's carnal scent. His body felt loose and boneless after hours of being suspended in pleasure. The only ache lingered between his legs, where the tree had dispatched its smoothest vines to stretch him and give Will his fill. Even now, he wanted them back inside. He pictured them growing up into his body, sprouting into his veins, claiming him whole.

"You're getting stronger," Will murmured, stroking along smooth, warm bark. A thought came to him and pulled from him a curious sense of pride. There was no need to restrain himself from giving it voice, as there would be among humans. "Is it me? Am I helping you grow?"

All the branches around him shook suddenly in unison and for a moment, Will thought he would fall. He grabbed on where he could, and then he was travelling, snatched and passed up through the boughs like a child's doll. Higher and higher, faster and faster, until he was thrust above the roof of the forest.

When he finally came to a stop, he gasped. Held up securely by a nest of branches, he'd found himself enthroned above the world, beneath a star-filled cobalt dome of the early morning sky. He hung on for dear life and shivered against the sudden rush of sharp autumn air, but he couldn't look away. His view was clear in every direction. The black sea of treetops stretched on for miles, and far beyond it, the few lights of Balti glinted like scattered embers.

Will grinned until his face ached. But the more he looked, the more his eyes began to sting with tears. In a few hours, he'd have to leave here. He stared ahead to the West, towards Balti. What was waiting for him in that distant pile of scattered embers? Only endless demands for his time and talent, the slow erosion of his self through solitude and work.

The tree sent up more fine branches, clustering them together to blanket Will's chilled body. Will caught one in his palm and nuzzled it to his face, breathed in its warmth and its moonlight scent.

"I could stay," he whispered. "Why shouldn't I? I love you."

Something stirred in the trees behind him, a sharp rustle that made Will grip the branches tighter. He snapped his head back to look.

Far off in the distance, shadowed against the deep blue of the early dawn, a pair of antlers had sprouted from the boughs. Another rustle, and a stagmare's black head stretched itself out from of the jagged sea of treetops.

It twitched its head about, once, twice. When it saw Will, it froze.

Will held his breath. He stared into the animal's glowing red eyes.

The eyes stared back, only for an instant. The creature let out a huff and plunged itself back into the forest's depths. All was still once more.

\----

The night of Count Hannibal Lecter's party, Will caught a ride up to the castle with some of the trackers and buyers from the guild. The cart took them over the steep, stony path that spun its way up to the gates. Will's head, throbbing again with pain since he left the woods, was all the worse at the prospect of enduring an evening among strangers.

The sight of Beverly Katz loitering near the gate brought some relief. In her polished leather boots and lace-up mauve jacket, she looked like one of the arriving throng — unlike Will, who'd made the slightest of efforts.

Will elbowed his way past the crowds to reach her. She gave him an encouraging smile.

"It's a party, not a funeral, Graham."

"Really would rather not be here."

"I know. But we might learn something useful, you said so yourself. Besides: free booze, right?"

Will managed a smile. "Oh—" He reached into his pocket. He'd nearly forgotten. "I got you something."

Katz looked at the small, corked bottle Will had awkwardly extended out to her. After a moment, she took it and opened it up for a sniff. She whistled. "Wow. That smells... expensive."

"'The Compass Bloom'. Limited edition. Made from the same roses you saw in the Scent-makers' garden."

She gave the bottle another smell. "It's fantastic. Are you sure about this?"

"Yep. And don't worry, I get free samples. Never know what to do with them."

She gave him a pleased look and dabbed some of the scent on her neck and wrists.

They followed the throng inside and were met by bland-faced footmen who collected Katz' jacket and Will's bag. The corridors of Count Hannibal Lecter's home opened up into a cavernous dining hall intersected with countless slender windows and doors. The glittering, chattering cream of Balti society was assembled there under a vaulted dome of gold-spattered dark blue. Will peered up at the ceiling. When his eyes landed on a chandelier made of gilded stagmare antlers, his head spun. He thought of being suspended between the dome of the sky and the forest below and wished he had the safety of the tree to anchor him down.

Katz's voice kept him tethered to reality. "So. I've been flipping through old copies of the Tattler," she whispered. "Thank gods for Freddie Lounds' love of gossip. Sure enough, the Wendigo tree gets its first mention in a story about one of Lecter's parties."

Will tried to navigate them to a quieter part of the hall. "Any names attached to that story?"

"No. Well, yes— everyone was talking about it. It's weird. The whole legend of the tree seemed to spring into people's heads fully formed, like someone had just slotted it in there. And it happened right here, between these walls."

They stopped some steps away from the crowd and took in the festivities. Servers in high-collared coats shuttled among the guests, distributing food and drink from trays or making deliveries to the long dining table which had been set to the far back of the hall to accommodate the mingling masses. Naturally, the host was nowhere in sight.

Beverly sighed. "Gods. Imagine putting on something like this and not even showing your face."

"We all do what Lecter does," Will said. He thought of the tree, of never wanting to leave its embrace in the dark heart of the wood. "We all hide who we are."

"To some degree, I guess. Not literally though."

"I know why he does it," Will added quickly. He could almost feel Katz's eyebrow arch up in response. "He lets these people construct whatever picture they want of him, while he gets to keep the real version to himself. Unspoiled and uncorrupted. I bet none of their theories about him come close to touching the truth."

"Freddie Lounds has had a few of those theories over the years."

"I doubt even she really wants to know what he really is. These people here—" Will nodded to the sparkling and pomaded concourse— "They prefer the mystery. Makes them seem mysterious too, being part of it."

"And what does Lecter want? Other than to hide his true self."

That, Will though to himself, was the question. He had a theory of his own, but wasn't willing or ready to share it yet. He felt Beverly's eyes on him.

"Guess you two aren't that different then, huh?" she said.

Will gave her a look. She shrugged. "He likes hiding out in his fancy castle, you like hiding out in the woods. If you could, wouldn't you do exactly what he's doing?"

"A canapé to compliment the lady's perfume?" a voice inquired. They turned. Unnoticed, one of the servers had approached from behind and now stood at a respectable distance, his gold tray perfectly balanced on the tips of gloved fingers.

Tiny roses spun from thin strips of meat, their petals only just browned by the searing kiss of flame, sat on the polished gold of the man’s tray, alongside other equally elaborate delicacies. Will stared at the roses, half-expecting them to bleed.

Beverly pointed a finger at one of the fleshy blooms. "Are those rolled up with real rose petals?"

The man inclined his head minutely. "Damask rose. Perfectly edible."

"Thanks, they look good." Beverly piled one rose and several other treats into her palm. "Got anything to wash these down with?"

The man nodded graciously towards a young server woman nearby. "My colleague will be pleased to help you."

Beverly winked at Will and made her way towards the girl with the drinks. Will was left alone with the server, who didn't seem in a hurry to move on with his duties.

"Her perfume isn't that obvious, is it?" Will asked at last, after the man's eyes had lingered on him for too long.

"It’s difficult not to take notice of such an exceptional scent. The middle note of black currant and clove is unmistakable.'The Compass Bloom' is one of the Scent-makers' finest efforts.”

Will wondered how this waiter came to be familiar with such a niche fragrance. Working for Lecter must have had its oblique benefits. He glanced again at the slick morsels of meat on the man's gleaming tray, still held up with perfect poise. He caught his reflection in the gold, smeared and strange.

"Didn't know you could pair food with perfume," Will said. "Always thought they kind of clashed."

"With patience and knowledge, the two can be brought into perfect accord." The man paused, carefully rearranging the remaining appetisers into an even and orderly pattern with gloved fingers. "Although to my regret, I have made nothing tonight that could pair with the scent you yourself are wearing."

Will stared up sharply at the man's face and found two eyes of curiously mutable amber.

"I'm not wearing a scent," Will said slowly, chest filling up with unease. What exactly had this man smelled on him? At home, Will had scrubbed himself clean from the tree's scent twice over. "And what do you mean: you haven't made— are you one of the cooks here?"

"One of the chefs," the man corrected with a slight bow. "A sensitive nose is a necessity in my profession. But in this case it seems my senses have failed me. I apologise."

Will felt more unanchored than ever. Over the man's shoulder, he could no longer see Beverly. He spotted Jack Crawford instead, deep in the crowd, sweet-talking one of his customers. Will stared at the man again, this stranger with an exceptional nose and a knowledge of obscure fragrance, who lingered before Will as unhurried to move on as before.

"Mind telling me what you thought you smelled?"

The man took a smooth step closer. What the hell did his eyes remind Will of? Light from the wall-hung lanterns flicked itself into their depths. The anxious spike in Will's heart would not settle.

"Not at all." The man's voice was like soot and polished brass. "The basenote is similar to stagwood. But the other components of the final accord are unfamiliar to me. I can only guess that they are an orchestration of your own unique chemistry. And that, ultimately, is your personal secret."

Will felt his face heat. The windows. The castle's amber windows. That's what the man's eyes reminded him of. In the chattering crowd beyond them, another familiar face caught his eye: Zeller, looking harried, making his way towards Crawford. Will knew why: the lab results. The root Katz had left at the Scent-makers had been dissected and examined.

"Your nose is imagining things," Will said to the man. "I can't afford to wear stagwood. Excuse me."

He hurried on past and plunged himself into the maze of guests. He tried his best to move quickly. He needed to get to Zeller before Zeller got to Crawford.

"Psst. Graham." Katz. She'd appeared from behind him and grabbed him by the elbow.

Will swore internally. What news was Zeller delivering to Crawford? He already knew at least one part of that message: that once dissected, the root section had released an all too familiar scent. Caramel moonlight. Sunshine on water. They would all know then: the fool's gold was real. The search for the tree would begin in earnest.  
  
"Sorry, I was— " Will muttered at Katz. "I need to talk to Zeller."

"Zeller can wait. You really need to come see this. It's about the tree."

That helped Will relent and he let himself be drawn away. He turned to look for the server-chef who'd scented his secret, but the man and his tray of butchered roses was nowhere to be seen.

\---  
  
When Katz was sure they wouldn't be spotted, she snuck Will through one of the slender doors that lead out of the dining hall, into the depths of the castle.

They found themselves in a narrow gallery hung with vast mirrors and lit sparsely by dim lanterns. 

"Saw some of the waiters go through here," Katz whispered. "There's a turning off on the right nearby, I think it leads down to the kitchens."

"Is that where we're going?"

Katz shook her head and put a finger to her lips. Voices were coming from the narrow steps on the right. They snuck past them quickly.

The gallery seemed to dim further. Will tried to reign in his racing heart: his reflection, stretched to infinity by the tunnel of tarnished mirrors, stalked his every step.

"Is it far?" Will asked. He was itching to get back to the party, to track down Zeller and find out what Jack Crawford now knew. Close behind that was the urge to find again the amber-eyed stranger. Will half-expected the man to appear in one of the mirrors, poised, collected, cooly examining this ill-advised endeavour.

"We're not far now," Beverly whispered. "Gods, look at this place. You think a family as old as Lecter's would have some ancestral portraits to hang here. But nope, just mirrors. You can't even see yourself in them." She stopped and grabbed him by his sleeve. "Here it is. Look!"

The gallery had lead them into a dark and soaring rotunda room that split off into three more narrow corridors. Here, too, mirrors plastered every wall.

Squinting in the dim light, Will followed the path of Beverly's extended finger.

When he saw the child's reflection, he startled, gasped. She stood so still, so forlorn in this hall of mirrors. Will spun around to look behind him.

"It's a painting," Katz hissed at him. "Goddamn it, Graham, it's a painting. Look at it!"

Will caught his breath with a shudder and stepped closer. The canvas before them had been framed to match the mirrors. It stretched, like they did, from floor to ceiling.

The girl had been painted life-size. She could not have been more than six or seven years old. Her pale lace dress lace matched the colour of her hair, so blonde it seemed white in the low light. Her glossy eyes gazed out at Will, fawn-like, life-like, oddly pleading. A dark forest soared up behind her.

Bundled in the girl's arms was a bouquet of long white flowers. They dripped through her tiny arms from twisting branches of lacquered coral wood.

Will's hand twitched towards the painting.

"Katz, it's—" he whispered. "It's—"

He heard a rustle, a creak. When a thud followed, Will jumped and turned.

"Katz?"

A swift slithering sound, then silence. That same dreadful silence that had descended when he'd lost track of Franklyn.

Unadulterated fear shot through Will, followed by desperation.

He looked helplessly about the corridors leading out of the rotunda.

"Oh gods, Beverly. Where—"

He couldn't see her — but he could smell her: 'The Compass Bloom' had trailed off to the right and that's where Will ran, blindly, until he nearly tumbled down a set of stairs.

Slithering again. Another thud. Will caught his balance, staggered himself straight. He snatched a lantern from a wall and stalked slowly down the wide, winding steps. The rose scent had dispersed, replaced by—

It couldn't be.

No light in the windowless room he'd reached, none but his solitary lantern.

No one here. Only Will. And the scent. The sweet scent he loved above all things filled the black room, permeated it.

"Where are you?" Will mouthed shakily. Who was he speaking to? He crept forward, into the blackness. On his next step, his foot faltered. He'd reached some kind of precipice. He brought the lantern down to look.

The edge of the pit loomed below him. Something jerked inside. Something was unravelling itself from the depths. Something caught at his ankle. He knew it as soon as it touched his bare skin.

He threw himself down to the ground. The roots shot out of the pit to embrace him. They wound into his hair, smoothed themselves over his face and neck, caressing.

"You," Will whined, stroking every scion that writhed ecstatically about him. "Why are you here? Why does he keep you here, how—"

He stopped. He lay very still, listening to his frantic breath. Not just his breath— someone else's.

The slithering. The silence, the fear. Will threw off the caressing roots, hauled himself to his feet and snatched up the lantern.

"What did you do?" he rasped.

The vines retreated and swayed before him, as if perplexed.

Will took an unsteady step forward and stretched out his arm as far as he could see, towards the bowels of the black pit from which sprung the fragrant roots of the Wendigo tree.

And that's when he saw her, suspended there, in those depths.

The roots had cocooned her whole. They'd wrapped themselves around her neck. They'd thrust into her mouth. Will saw her face, her wildly pleading eyes. The faintest choked sound escaped her.

Will fell to his knees again. He snatched at the vines, tugged at them with all his strength, pleaded for them to let go.

A single tendril split itself off from the unyielding swarm and caressed Will's tear-stained cheek. Then, along with others, it slithered back into the pit. The roots vanished, taking Beverly Katz with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "The Compass Bloom" is based on ["Portrait of a Lady"](https://www.fredericmalle.com/product/19566/50241/perfumes/portrait-of-a-lady/dominique-ropion), one of my favourite perfumes.


	9. "Dig, girl"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry this update is so late. Life, you know...

One day he'd recall the cloistered heat of his father's orangery, heavy with the scent of citrus trees in bloom: tangelos, rangpur limes, ponderosa lemons, all fragrant hybrids fetched from far away.

He'd recall the pitter patter approach of her little feet over painted tile.

What was he reading that day? He hid behind his book, pretending not to see her until she stomped and huffed for his attention.

"Brother!”

He looked up. She stood before him, white lace dress soiled with dirt, tiny arms cradled and straining about a painted terra cotta pot. Her scowling face looked out at Hannibal from behind a tangle of red shoots.

Hannibal put down his book and took the pot from her before she lost her strength. He examined her beloved sapling with care: it looked wilted and dry.

"It won't eat flies anymore," she whined. "It's dying, do something."

Hannibal lifted up the pot for closer inspection. The plant's roots, the same coral red as its branches, had burrowed out of the drainage holes and twisted languidly in the air of their own accord — seeking, sensing.

Hannibal extended out his index finger and watched the roots twitch towards his flesh. They looked, he thought, absolutely ravenous. And yet they had never done her harm.

"Just as you and I can no longer sustain ourselves on our mother's milk," Hannibal said to her, "so your favourite can no longer live and thrive on flies alone. It needs something more substantial."

Her frown deepened. "Like porridge?"

Hannibal smiled. "No, sister. Not porridge."

He set the pot down carefully and reached for the box he had stashed beneath the bench. He placed it in his lap and removed the lid to show her.

She leaned in for a closer look. She flinched and gasped. "But— it's still alive!"

It was. Hannibal had been careful to merely stun the robin, which now sat in the box, docile, dazed and oblivious to its fate.

"It won't accept anything less." Hannibal said. "You wouldn't want your favourite to die, would you?"

She chewed on her lip. After a moment, she shook her head so fiercely that her golden hair went flying, a near-white halo in the stark sunshine of that long ago morning.

Hannibal scooped up the bird, as gently as he had set down the pot. He offered it to her.  
  
Even in the sun, she looked pale. Her eyes were wide and staring. She shook her head again. “You do it, brother," she whispered. Her hands flew up to her face. She covered her eyes at first, then slowly peered through her fingers.

Hannibal extended the unfortunate offering towards the pot.

The drooping branches of the sapling stirred. Whip-fast, precise, a single tendril shot forth and snatched the feast from Hannibal's hand. Thrice it spun itself about the bird's neck, tightened there fiercely, jutted up into the air and held the creature aloft, triumphant. The robin thrashed once, twice, then was still.

Hannibal stared, transfixed. He heard his sister whimper, felt her tiny fragile shape cling and cower at his side, the weak clasp of her damp hands.

Slowly, the branch recoiled back towards the pot, holding tight to its strangled claim. Others unfurled down to join it and began, with furious speed, to burrow at the base of the sapling, sending flecks of soil onto her dress, onto Hannibal's shoes. When they were satisfied, the limp tiny body of the bird was pulled into the dirt and shoved under, vanishing.

All was still for a moment. Then a muffled creak and crunch came from within the pot and the earth crested violently, as if something might burst from underneath. 

The branches jerked and twitched. Then silence once more.

Next to him, Hannibal's sister trembled like a leaf. Her bird-like breath was the only sound in the stifling orangery. Hannibal smoothed a hand over the fine silk of her hair. 

The frantic dance of the branches stopped.

The scent of the citrus receded, replaced by a perfume unlike any other. It was, Hannibal thought, the perfume of sunshine on water, of cold caramel moonlight.

\---

"Do you see now? This is the true nature of the thing you love."

The emptiness of the soaring hall amplified the dishonesty of Hannibal's words. There was no one to receive their poor intent.

The man — the dark-haired, stormy-eyed man called Will — had fled. Hannibal had watched him from the shadows as he made his escape.

Now Hannibal stood where the man had stood, clasping the lantern the man had clasped. He gazed fixedly into the dark pit. Nothing moved within. Nothing re-emerged to welcome Hannibal and give him his due for the offering he'd lured here.

Through the thick walls, above the alarmingly quickened beat of his heart, Hannibal could hear the distant din of his party. Apparently it had only slightly been disturbed by the sight of the frantic young man who'd dashed through the crowd on his way out of the castle.

And wasn't that what Hannibal wanted?

He'd hedged his bets: he had assumed that the tree would finally feast on its plaything. That failing, Hannibal had hoped to deter and to frighten. And in that, wasn't he successful?

For now Will knew the true and beastly nature of the thing he had given his body to.

Yet discontentment bubbled thick in Hannibal's heart. He wanted his guests dispersed. The idea of inserting himself into their rank in disguise and resuming his charade filled his throat with bile. He wanted solitude.

Or did he? There it was again: self-deceit. Hannibal was drowning in it.

He closed his eyes to the dim light, lifted his chin and let his nostrils flare. The air about him was exquisite, thickly scented. But it wasn't the scent Hannibal had meticulously sought to cultivate. It wasn't the scent that would illuminate in the darkened places of his mind the precious bright years of his childhood.

The scent was brilliant and unsettling, like a headlong plunge into a stream or the first waking moment in a strange place.

The tree's sap had wed itself irrevocably with the singular chemistry of the man called Will. Will's pleasure and Will's fear rushed back to Hannibal when he closed his eyes, perfectly immersive, more real than any of his olfactory evocations.

Hannibal wanted more of that scent. But the man had fled and the roots had retreated.

Here was honesty at last: Hannibal hadn't felt this alone since the day his sister died.

He knelt at the edge of the pit.

"Come," he said sharply.

No reply. Blackness and silence. None of that sweet, familiar slither.

"Come," he said again.

Again, silence.

Hannibal rose. He inhaled slowly and listened to his heart. It told him things he would now be forced to accept: that the man had gone and taken the tree with him.

The possibilities were many now. Hannibal decided to dedicate himself to one over all the others.

It was time, Hannibal decided, to fetch his knives.

\---

On his way out, Will stole a horse.

Fear, guilt, panic — all of these had carried him out of the castle. But he rode home now on frantic fumes of hope.

He owed that hope to Beverly. The blame was his alone. There was a chance, however slim, that he could still make amends.

By the time he staggered through his door, he had something like a plan.

Watched by worried canine eyes, he began to throw together his things. Where the hell was his satchel? His thoughts were frayed with fear, flashing back to the dark pit and the desperate face inside.

And then there was the man, the amber-eyed stranger who had sniffed out Will's secret. Will was certain now who he'd come face to face with. He felt as if Hannibal Lecter's shadow had stalked him home, had been with him all along.

He was heading for the door, and the dog harnesses that hung there, when the steps of the porch creaked.

The dogs raised an alarm. Will froze and groped for his knife.

The door creaked open. Will put down the blade and swallowed hard. He stared at Jack Crawford and at the satchel hung from his arm.

Crawford nodded to the bag. "You left this at Castle Lecter, Will."

Will's hands clenched. He wanted to snatch the bag, to flee from Jack as he had fled from the castle, its mirrors, its pit and the terrible truth they all held. The dogs were on their feet now, some making their way between him and Crawford. 

Crawford stepped closer. “And you know what I found inside.”

Will gestured for the dogs to settle. A fine trickle of sweat spilled down his spine. Could he really have been this stupid? He watched as Crawford reached into the bag and retrieved Will's lock box. Will hadn't emptied it. He couldn't bear to part with its contents.  

"Yeah,” he said hoarsely. "I know what you found."

"And you know that it came from the same plant Katz found in the forest. A plant with sap that smells like stagwood."

Will felt his face twist into a bitter smile. "Yeah. Your fool's gold," he replied.

"Where did you find the twig, Will? Tell me and we can start to settle this here and now, for good."

Will stared at the lock box, the lies caught in his throat. The longer he debated lying, the less Crawford would believe him.

"I need you to take me to it," Jack said. "You're going there now, aren't you? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't follow you."

That did it. Will moved for the door, snatching his bag from Crawford's hand. He grabbed a harness and called for Harley.

"Is your life good enough a reason, Jack?" he said. 

From behind, he heard a scoff and a chuckle. His jaw tightened. He knelt, gave Harley a few reassuring strokes and began to fasten her lead. 

"You don't get it, do you, Jack? Hannibal Lecter's played you. Your magical stagwood tree exists. Lecter knows it exists, knows that it— it feeds on people. And on stagmares. It takes them down by proxy, strings them up, helps itself to the finest cuts. And you, Jack, you sent people into the woods to find it. Lecter wanted your bounty hunters to look for the tree. He needed it well fed."

No reply. Will got up to face Crawford and found all amusement and disdain drained from his face. He stared at Will, brow deeply etched.

"Why does he—?"

"—Feed it? Because it's his life's work. Because it's beautiful and there's nothing else like it. Because—" Will swallowed back tears. "Because that tree belongs to Hannibal Lecter. He has nothing else."

"Will?"

Will looked up from loading his supplies into his bag. His throat still felt tight. 

"Why the hell are you going back to it then?"

Will wanted to leave him with something that was, at least, part of the truth.

"I'm going to try and find Beverly Katz."

\---

The valley glowed, milky green in the dark heart of the forest. The tree at its centre soared into the night. Its young shoots had thickened out and undulated slowly among the older branches, heavy with the pearly cascade of newly opened blossoms that bowed towards the mossy ground.

Will extinguished his torch. For a moment, he allowed himself to take in the tree from the safety of darkness. Then he shortened Harley's leash and stepped into the ring of light.

"You look beautiful," he said. "Did you miss me?"

He heard his voice, alien in the silence of the forest and muffled by the scarf he'd coiled about his face to shield himself from the tree's fragrance. The mask had failed him: the beguiling scent soon began to seep through.

A multitude of branches stirred at his arrival. They unspooled from the trunk and extended towards him in greeting.

Will stepped back, just out of reach. The branches strained for him again and again, then hovered extended in midair, as if perplexed.

Will closed his eyes for a moment. The scent was in his blood now, dashing for his heart. He shortened his breath to fight against the rush of want it carried.

"I don't understand why you haven't killed me," he said, and knelt down, onto Harley's leash. He opened his satchel and retrieved a canvas bundle. "And I'm sorry that I have to do this."

He unfurled the cloth. The metal inside glinted in the faint light of the valley. Will picked up the hatchet.

He heard a sharp rustle, a worried whine from Harley. The extended branches hovered still for a moment longer — then sliced the air with a hiss and whipped about Will's neck, once, twice, and again.

Will gasped and slumped forward. He groped for his neck with one hand, kept a tight grip on the hatchet with the other. Harley's frantic barks cracked the silence of the forest.

He wedged his fingers between his neck and the strangling vines. His pulse thrashed under the noose, but he forced himself to go still and limp. He kept his foot down on Harley's leash and waved for her to settle. He held the hatchet tight and waited, cheek pressed to the cold mossy earth. He'd strike if he needed to.

"I don't want to hurt you," he rasped. "I only want to know you. To see you."

The noose creaked and tightened — but didn't choke. And Will wasn't being dragged. The tree behind him had stopped swaying and grew still. It was, Will hoped, hesitating.

"Will you show me your secret heart? Where it leads? If you love me—" Will tried to swallow against the scented coils cutting into his throat. His eyes felt wet. "Show me. Please."

The moment stretched. Will heard Harley's whimpers and the low whisper of the wind moving through the highest boughs of the ancient wood. Somewhere far away, the rumble of hooves. By degrees, the branches began to loosen. Then, like a caress, they retreated.  
  
Will grabbed for his throat and staggered to his knees with a gasp. He looked up: the tree had recalled its scions. It remained utterly still, withdrawn into itself.

But a few steps ahead, the ground seemed to stir. It heaved up, like a lung, then collapsed in again. Where it had risen, a fine fissure of black earth appeared in the green carpet of moss and fungi.

Will let out a shaky laugh.

"Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you."

He groped for the harness strapped to his back and unsheathed from it his shovel. He loosened Harley's leash.

She gazed at him, eyes worried and perplexed.

"Dig, girl," Will told her. "We're gonna have to dig."


	10. Entanglement

Will staggered to his feet and saw above him a jagged crevice of milky green light.

Hands shaking, he rekindled his torch. Harley wriggled frantically beside him and he knelt down to examine her. She was unharmed, but the flame caught the wet glint of fear in her eyes and her trembling. Will couldn't blame her. For all he knew, the Wendigo tree had invited them down into their grave. 

They had dug until the earth had crumbled beneath them and sent them tumbling into a well of darkness. How far down, Will couldn't tell — not far enough to harm them but too far to climb their way out with ease.

The dog's whine rose up, plaintive and pleading. Will laid a palm over her head. 

"Shh. It's okay. It's gonna be okay,” he said, forcing into his voice a calm he didn’t feel.

He extended out the arm that held the torch and turned on the spot. The light painted over ragged walls of earth, limestone fragments and familiar red roots. Their vines clustered all around but for one spot, where they thickened and vanished into blackness. 

"A tunnel," Will muttered to reassure himself. The alternative spelled doom.

He crouched and groped around his feet. His hand skidded over something smooth and dry. He picked it up and almost let it fall again when it came into the light: fragments of flesh still clung to the skull of a small deer. 

Will flung it hard into the darkness ahead. It clattered down somewhere far off in the distance. Harley didn't try to give chase — her fear kept her close.

A tunnel then. And that left Will with only one choice. He shortened Harley's leash and started to walk. 

They seemed to be descending. The sweet scent of the tree, the scent that had besotted Will's heart and debauched his body, was dissipating quickly. Will smelled only cold mud and the faint stench of rotting meat. Something wet and coppery crept down his throat and coated his guts with nausea. He walked on, comforted only by the warm canine shape by his leg. He held up the torch and peered about. 

They were winding their way through a tangled red labyrinth. Their steps skidded and creaked over uneven ground, and broke a sepulchral silence. Here and there, woven into the ragged latticework of roots that scaffolded the tunnels, Will saw bones: hips, femurs, spines, some of their shapes more familiar than others. A sick dread washed over him at the thought of the poor wretched creatures stripped of their organs and flesh, dragged down here to satiate the thing Will had loved. Still loved. 

He found his chalk and made his first place mark with a trembling hand. He half-expected the entire catacomb to stir at his touch, but the structure stayed as still as the tree that had spawned it. Nothing creaked or reached for Will, nothing seemed to take notice of him here — and yet he felt watched.

How long had the tree been building these networks? Did they run under the whole forest, with an artery that connected them to Hannibal Lecter's castle and its grim pit? All these years, while Will walked the Great Balti Wood that had been his home, the tree must have been just under his feet. As he wanderer deeper now into its twisting dark heart, Will thought: you've been with me all along.

His torch flickered and dimmed. He stopped, wiped the cold damp from his brow and squinted into the dark.

The light bent unexpectedly: something nearby was blocking the path. Harley leaned into his thigh and growled. Will stepped closer: the tunnel ahead widened abruptly and soared high. From its centre rose a pale, craggy pile of enormous skulls. Will recoiled at the sight of their familiar elongated shapes. Stagmares — at least a dozen of them. Their empty eye sockets stared out at Will like the eye of Hannibal Lecter's pit. Will could picture the tree, satisfied with its feast, dragging these trophies here through miles of tunnels to assemble the triumphant mound of death. 

The tunnel beyond the mound seemed to split. Will kept Harley close as he crept past the skulls and saw the path fork into four. One looked far too low and narrow to traverse. The other three were more manageable. 

Will knelt down and reached into his bag. Harley nosed at his hand and gave him an uncertain lick.

"Guess it's all down to you now, girl," he told her. 

He found the scrap of cloth he had soaked in 'The Compass Bloom': the perfume he had given to Beverly. He held it to Harley's nose. 

“Go. Track."

He loosened the leash and let her scent. The dog hesitated, then pulled to the right. She stopped, retreated, looked to Will, tried again. At the entrance of the middle tunnel, she woofed, and started down the dark path. Will followed her masterly senses, heart filled with fear and hope in equal measure. 

\---

Time passed strangely in the murk. Minutes or hours may have slipped by. Harley kept her nose close to the ground. Will followed, stooped in the warren of stagnant roots, and marked their way as they went. 

The dog moved with certainty, and then with increasing urgency. Then she stopped and scented the air in rapid sniffs. Will feared the worst — had they taken the wrong turn after all? His own nose, still full of mud and decay, told him nothing. 

Harley yanked at her harness and started to bark. 

"Shh, shh."

Why was he hushing her? What did he fear? The dog pulled him forward, to where the wall of the tunnel seem to dip into a shallow cave. There, by the fading light of his torch, Will saw a shape that wasn't bone, wood or stone. 

It was hair — long hair, spilling like a dark veil through the red braids of roots. 

Will's stomach seized into a knot. Harley was tugging him forward, frantic tail lashing the air, her barks cracking the dead silence of the tunnel. This wasn’t what she sounded like, Will reminded himself, when she found corpses. He surged ahead, into the cave.

"Katz, Katz. Oh gods."

The roots had twisted around her limbs and neck, pinned her up in their net three feet off the ground. Will reached up to brush her hair back and saw her face, filthy and scabbed and bloodied. At his touch, her mouth moved and let out a faint moan. Will almost whined with relief.

"Hey," he told her. "I'm here."

"Graham."

"Yeah, it's me. Gonna get you out of here."

She groaned. Her neck craned painfully forward in the noose that held it. Will fumbled for his knife. He was about to start cutting, when he hesitated. 

"Katz, will they— the roots."

"They—" she coughed raggedly, limbs straining in their bonds. "They haven't moved. I think— I think it's safe."

Will began to cut, carefully first around her neck, then legs, arms last. The roots snapped and splintered under his blade, the outer epidermis crumbling away like dried blood. Katz tumbled limply into his arms and cried out weakly at the cramps that must have seized her. When she seemed to steady, Will held her up and groped for his flask. 

She drank in small, desperate gulps. She held tight to his arm. "Will, you have to—"

"Tell me later. Can you walk? Your legs—"

"Yeah, I think so." She looked to Harley, who was still woofing and dancing at their feet with the simple joy of her discovery. "Good girl. How did she...?"

"'The Compass Bloom'. Katz—" Will took her in, the deep gashes and scratches that covered her whole. He swallowed back the lump in his throat. "I'm so sorry."

She elbowed him weakly. "Shut up, Graham. Just get me out of here."

\---

In slow, laboured steps, past the pile of stagmare skulls, they wound their way back to the entrance. Katz grew quiet. Will felt her fade, and hated not being able to see properly to her wounds. 

He extinguished his torch and got them settled in the faint beam of fungal light. He still didn't know if he could get them out. His satchel had rope, not much of it — he could tie to it Harley's harness, then use his hatchet as a crude hook. 

For now, they needed to rest. Will didn't think he could. The cold sweetness of the tree's fragrance drifted down on them through the crevice on an opalescent mist, and Will's heart quickened again. Shivers of alien desire rippled down his spine. How long before he surrender to it whole? 

"We need to wait until sun-up," he told Katz and peered up. "It's— it's dormant in daylight. It mimics an ordinary black oak. When I first found it, I had no idea what I was looking at." 

Katz followed his gaze up to the luminous splinter in the earth. “Should be safe then.”

“Yeah.”

"Shame. Really wanted to see it." She slumped awkwardly, painfully on the jacket Will had spread for her and closed her eyes. "At least there’s that smell. The stagwood. So beautiful."

Will nodded and swallowed another lump in his throat. It seemed like the most inappropriate moment to ask if the sap of the tree did to Katz what it did to him. But then the answer seemed obvious. 

Katz was silent for a long moment. Will thought she might have drifted off.

"I saw him." 

Will startled and stared up. 

"Down here. Walking the tunnels," Katz whispered. "The waiter from the party."

A trickle of cold sweat joined the shivers marching down Will's spine. "You know who he is," he said hoarsely.

"Yeah. I do." She curled in on herself and seemed to shudder. "He saw me. Must have known I was alive, but he just— walked past me. Like I didn't matter."

Will was silent, eyes on the ground. He unwrapped a small loaf of bread and tore her off a piece. "You should eat something.”

She reached for the bread. Her hand lingered over his. 

"Find him, Will.”

Will pulled his hand away. He shook his head hard. 

"I came down here to get you. That's what I'm doing. Count Hannibal Lecter— "

"—helps his pet plant murder people. Have I got that right? Do we really think after all this, he'll keep any evidence linking him to the tree? What do you think he'll do to that hideous pit of his?"

And what will he do to the tree? Will thought, and a sudden fear surged under his shivering fever of want. If Lecter was down here—

"You need help getting back," he said weakly.

"I can walk. I can get help," Katz said. "Jack Crawford?"

"Looking for me. Or the tree at least. I'm sure he is."

"See? Help's coming. But we can't miss this chance.”

Will put his head in his hands. The tree’s perfume streamed like a molten river through his veins. The tangled labyrinth of roots weighed on him. He longed to be up above, coiled and cradled safely in the weightless embrace of smooth and scented branches.

What could he say to Katz that would be as good a half-truth as the one he'd told to Jack Crawford? After all, he couldn't say to her: I didn't come here only to find you.

\---

Dawn brought with it a sense of inevitability. Katz had slept in fractured spells, Will not at all. 

When ordinary sunshine replaced the fungal light from above, Will made his crude winch. They got ready in silence, Will dividing his supplies and seeing to the worst of Katz’s wounds. The short haul up to the surface would be hard on her. After a protest, she agreed to take Harley with her.

It took a few tries. Will gritted his teeth through her cries of pain as she struggled her way up his shoulders to the surface. When she was safely outside, Will hugged Harley and watched as Katz pulled her up too, as quickly as she could. 

Katz stared down at him, her silhouette blocking out the light. Harley whined mournfully beside her.

"Don't wait. Go," Will whispered up to her.

She did linger, but only for a moment longer — then was gone. 

Will was alone in the murky sprawl of silence and death beneath the Wendigo tree. 

\---

Darkness. Miles of cold earth, damp, decay. When the tree's perfume dispersed, the feverish want finally cut him loose. He felt only his loneliness and the dull delirium of exhaustion. 

Past the monstrous stagmare remains, past the cave where he'd found Beverly. Deeper, further, he told himself. Without Harley’s nose, he had nothing else to go on. His marking chalk ran low. He began to wonder if he'd ever find his way back. 

His walk grew stooped and then he was crawling through grizzly passages, scratching his back, bruising his knees, cutting his hands on stone and gnarly roots that soaked up his blood. He barely noticed when his torch had gone out. 

Yet he could see. What new light was worming through the gaps in the roots? It was neither sunshine nor the green light that had ringed the tree. 

The new light returned to him the icy sweetness of the tree’s sap. 

He shivered. So here was madness at last. The light, the scent — he was imagining things. Battered and shaking, he crawled forward until the tunnel spat him out, like a knotted womb, into a great soaring hall. 

The ground beneath him smoothed out abruptly: he was crouching on wide paving stones. The roots of the tree divided and clung in enormous braids over the walls, rising up to the lanterns swung from high above. 

Will pulled himself up to stand, startled by the echo raised by the crack and creak of his bones. He looked about deliriously and knew, without a doubt, that the labyrinth had drawn him to the bottom of Castle Lecter's pit. 

He wiped the grime and sweat from his face, the blood from his hands, and unsheathed his knife. 

The roots climbing the walls — were they still roots at all? They seemed to glisten here, coral and smooth as the tree itself. But none moved in the murk of the hall. None reached out to claim Will. 

Thinner vines had dropped off from the braids and grown along the floor, towards the centre of the great pit. There, they coiled thickly around a pyre of stones, sprouting a handful of tiny leaves to form a wreath around the body of a small child. 

Will blinked at the sight. His heart was pounding. Surely another phantasm. Were his senses so marred by the tree's perfume already? 

He stepped closer on unsteady legs. 

She lay like a strange bird in her fragrant red nest. Her face was wholly covered by a veil of faded lace and pale golden hair. Her dress, or what time and decay had left of it, was the same white as it had been in the canvas. Only the hands, withered things of leathery flesh and bone, gave away her now-eternal state. They were folded over the stem of a single oblong flower the colour of pearls. 

For a moment, Will's fingers disobeyed him and flexed towards that mournful veil, towards the solitary flower. 

"It's you," he whispered to what remained of her, the girl in the painting, “So it killed you, too.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

He knew the voice at once. No time to turn, certainly none to run. He managed two steps before the warmth of another body reached him through the tomb-like chill of the pit, an arm braced his chest from behind, a knife met his throat. Will grabbed for it with one hand, flung his own knife back, and poised it to strike at Hannibal Lecter’s neck.

Locked together, they staggered back.

Will held his breath. If he were to survive, he had to keep from drowning in the tree’s disarming perfume. From behind, as if in answer, he heard a long, slow intake of breath. The blade shifted subtly against the tender skin beneath his jaw.

He was being smelled. 

A shiver ran through him. “It kills everything else, doesn’t it?“ Will whispered shakily. ”Did you help? Did you feed little morsels of her to your rare and beautiful possession?"

From behind, another breath, sharper this time, and a more sudden move of the blade. Will needed that reaction. When the knife twitched, he jerked forward and to the side, away from its threat. He kicked out, threw his arm back and heard a soft grunt when his elbow knocked against a ribcage. He had what he wanted: the room to wriggle down from the grip and to roll away.

He was on his feet again, a few steps of safety away, knife still held tight. Through the murk, he saw the bones and skin of that face: the man with eyes like the watchful castle windows, like the bark of the Wendigo tree.

Hannibal Lecter spread a slow smile. His canines were the colour of the dead girl’s dress. His long coat was the red of the tree’s lascivious branches.

“But you haven’t been eaten, Will, have you? Not in the usual sense of the word.”

Despite everything, Will felt himself flush. That insistent opalescent scent was everywhere, moving over his skin and caressing his lungs from the inside.

He nodded to the pyre of branch, stone and bones. “Who was she?”

Hannibal stayed still in the murk. His knife glinted at his side, as poised as Will’s was.

“My sister.”

Was the murk behind Hannibal moving? Will's knees felt weak. He felt the terror of his own want. He tried to circle closer, or move away — he wasn’t sure which.

Hannibal remained motionless, but for the slight incline of his head. The darkness didn’t. Something was stirring, slithering in its depths. Or were Will’s eyes, tired by darkness and misted by the heady sap, playing tricks on him? No — either all of this was a dream, or none of it.

“Are you unwell, Will?”

Will shook his head, wiped again at his drenched brow. His head was spinning, but he had nothing to hold on to. He looked behind him for the tunnel that had spawned him. It was nowhere to be seen. The tree’s tapestry had woven it shut.

When he turned back he saw them: arterial red, glistening in the dimness of this funereal pit, snaking between and past Hannibal’s feet, like red streams rushing towards him. He tried to run, but where to? They reached him in an instant. Pliant little twigs caught him by the ankles. The finest of them began to undo the laces of his boots.

“It affects you,” Hannibal said. “You affect it too. You’ve changed it, Will. Together, you’ve created something remarkable. Something that eludes me."

Will was doubled over, knife slicing frantically at the tender little twigs, all soon replaced by others that crept along his calves, caressed them. He peered up, half-pleading: “Tell them to get off me. Make them stop. Please.”

Hannibal’s face went blank. Under the filthy, fizzing want that dragged him to the edge of madness, Will heard his heart thunder with unadulterated panic. “You can’t, can you?” He let out a giddy laugh. “You can’t make it stop, you can’t—”

He gasped. He tried to point, to scream, but it was over in an instant: a mass of braided branches rose up like a tangled wave behind Hannibal Lecter and flung him headlong towards Will. 

They collided. Will threw his arms between them — too late. The scions snagged him by the wrist, disarmed him, pulled his arms forward and around Hannibal. Tripped up, they came crashing down together onto a scented carpet of ecstatically writhing branches, both of them huffing and flailing against the chaos. But there was no chaos — only the deliberation of the tree’s design. Will heard the clatter of Hannibal's knife and glimpsed his bewilderment and rage when the branches knotted his wrists behind Will, pulling their bodies close.

The tree was binding them, inextricably and without recourse, to each other.


	11. Hoof prints

* * *

_"The soul trembles before emptiness and desires contact at any price."_ \- Hjalmar Söderberg

\---

Will fought and thrashed in vain: with each drag and tug, the tree’s envoys swaddled them ever closer into their living nest. And all the while the air between them grew thicker, more heady, like smoke that crept into the hollow spaces in Will's body and filled them with want. Will felt as if his soul were sinking down through scented softness, into depths unknown. Only this time, someone was sinking down with him.

He fought harder. He tried to focus. He kicked out, but his knee bashed against Hannibal's and he cried out in pain, a wet pain blooming against his ankle. He strained to look down and saw split skin under twisted vine, someone's blood running over the leather of Hannibal's boot.

"Be still," Hannibal hissed against him. "Or you'll hurt us both further."

Will slumped, panting hard. It was no use anyway. His wrists were tied tightly against the small of Hannibal's back, Hannibal's own skidding in the sweat trickling down Will's spine. The tree's thicker vines had bound them shoulder to shoulder. Hannibal’s breath burned hot against Will’s cheek.

It was better not to move. Every jerk and squirm rubbed him against Hannibal and made obvious Will’s obscene state. He could feel his erection against Hannibal's thigh.

He pinched his eyes shut. It was all he could do to escape the onslaught of embarrassment, of mandated intimacy and the bright proximity of Hannibal’s eyes. He could hear the rustle and slither of tender rootlets exploring their skin. He took in a breath and exhaled out the last thing he had planned to say to the architect of all this madness.

"Sorry."

Hannibal was motionless, but for the rise and fall of his chest against Will's. After a moment, he spoke.

"If you’re apologising for your present state, I imagine you can hardly help it."

There was something familiar about his voice — Will could hear the same near-drunken languor slurring his own speech. He stole a glance through his eyelashes. This close, Hannibal’s face was a near-blur, but Will could still take in its depths and angles, at odds with the soft, sensuous mouth. The tree's vines had formed a crown-halo of undulating crimson behind his head and Will couldn't help but notice that its hue matched Hannibal's eyes. He saw the drawn out flare of Hannibal's nostrils. A question came to him, more urgent than the wish to escape.

"What do you smell?"

It wasn't what he'd wanted to ask. He wanted, desperately, to know he wasn't alone in having fallen under the perfumed spell.

Hannibal's tongue flicked over his lips. "I cannot describe it. You've created something transcendent."

Will shook his head. "Not me. I didn't— the tree..." he trailed off into a groan and squirmed again. Wisps of vines had found their way inside his shirt and caressed his nipples, his chest. They began to move lower, leaving sticky trails in their wake.

"The scent belongs to both of you now," Hannibal murmured, a bitter edge to his tone. "You've concocted it together."

Despite the deluge of sensation, Will stiffened and stared past Hannibal's shoulder, into the depths of the cavernous pit.

A stab of shame followed. His covetous secret sat poised on the tip of his tongue, the confession of the filthy, deviant thing he had done in the depths of the wood.

"You know," he whispered.

"I do." Hannibal's voice was so low, softer than the sound of Will's heart. "I saw you. The tree's fragrance had always been pure evocation, but once it had had you, it became visionary. I cannot explain how it let me to see you in its clasp. I cannot say how you've done what you've done, Will."

"You saw—" Will let loose a shaky laugh that echoed in the cavernous murk. The stab of secret shame was melting into curious relief. The rootlets had made their way down between skin and cloth, over his hipbones and thighs. Every inch of him sang with the low hum of pleasure. "You saw me getting fucked."

"Yes. The perfume brought you to me."

“And what do you see now?”

“Nothing. You. Just you, Will.”

The silence that followed seemed to last a small eternity. Will shut his eyes again and listened to the languid rustle of the vines between the quick echoes of his breath — or was it Hannibal's breath? Where was the tree touching him?

Through his daze, he saw Hannibal swallow. Another subtle shift of their bodies and that was betrayal enough — the unmistakable bulge of Hannibal's cock brushed against Will's own.

They both gave a small gasp.

"You made for an alluring sight," Hannibal said roughly. "You still do."

Will's breath was leaving him in unsteady puffs. It was so hard to stay still. All he wanted to do was to move again, to feel his arousal mirrored in another human form.

"Why— why did it choose me?" he huffed. "You must know."

"I don't know why. For all my knowledge of it, I could never entirely predict it. I had hoped you might tell me. Just as I now hope you have some idea of how we can escape our predicament."

"If you're counting on me to come up with a plan—" Will grunted and twisted his wrists hard against Hannibal's back— "then you're tied to the wrong guy. Maybe the knives— “

He groaned again. His struggle only heightened the friction. The spell was pulling them under. Their cocks strained together between them, the raw electrolytic musk of their arousal cutting through the fragrant power of the sap. Will strained his neck to peer back and saw their knives, glinting in the dim light, lying utterly out of reach.

"Will—"

Will turned back in time to see bewilderment stealing over Hannibal's face.

Delicate red shoots, beading with sap, were creeping up from behind, over Hannibal's throat, towards his mouth.

Will's own mouth fell open. He stared, transfixed. He remembered that invasion, the taste of the sap like moss and dark honey suspended in cream. Hannibal's breath quickened and he pressed his lips shut, but the rootlets persisted, teasing at the corners of his mouth and streaking it in pearly sheen.

Is this what Will had looked like to Hannibal, stripped bare and ravaged and caught in the throes of the tree's spell?

"You never tasted it?" he slurred.

Hannibal tried to flinch back and away. "No. It's never— reached out to me like this. To no one but you."

"It's good," Will murmured and then, despite himself, added: "Try it."

Hannibal stared at him, wide-eyed. After a moment, his lips parted tentatively and the first of the questing twigs slithered inside. The taste must have reached him quickly — Will watched as his eyes fluttered close and his head fell back against a pillow of vines.

Will laughed again. He let his hips grind forward. What did it matter now, in this living tomb? It all felt so good, the heat, the closeness. No one here to see them. No one to judge them but the ghost of a child.

"All this time, you had this," he said. "Right under your nose."

Hannibal groaned. "I didn't know. How could I? It wasn't— wasn't like this before you."

A trickle of sap spilled from his mouth and it was all Will could do to keep himself from lapping it up. Some lucid part of him remained: he noticed a slackening in the bonds that held his wrists behind Hannibal's back.

Furtively, slowly, he wiggled his right hand. He found slack. He jerked his arm — and set it free. He shook it loose and pushed it into the tight confine between their bodies. His hand shot up to Hannibal's neck.

Hannibal heaved a gasp. His eyes seemed to grow brighter, locked on Will's. A twitch, then a fine tremor seemed to shake his body.

“Maybe this is what it wants,” Will hissed. “To be rid of you.”

Will’s hand tightened. Hannibal didn’t struggle. He looked dazed, enthralled. The rootlets still danced about his throat, dipping wantonly in and out of his mouth and teasing Will's fingers.

Hannibal's hips hitched against Will's, seeking friction.

“It's inside me,” he rasped.

Will’s grip faltered.

Hannibal squirmed against him. In the low light, Will felt more than saw the flush that had crept into his cheeks. “I think you— know what I mean," he said.

Will's hand slid from Hannibal's throat and under his coat. He groped until he found skin, hot and slippery with sweat. He let his palm smooth down the small of Hannibal's back. "I want to feel it," he murmured. "I want to know it's doing to you what it did to me."

Hannibal mouthed his reply: _yes_. His lips were parted for silent gasps, his eyes barely open. Will kept their gazes locked while his hand crept lower, moving until it found the silk-smooth vine that had snuck beneath cloth, slipped between Hannibal's cheeks and into his body.

Will couldn't help a moan. He traced a finger blindly around the rim of Hannibal's hole. The vine that had stretched it was so slick, so thick — as thick as the ones that had fucked Will, licked at him from within, flooded his body with raw pleasure. Will gripped the smooth girth of it and pushed in. Just a little bit further. Then a bit more.

"Good?" he whispered against Hannibal's mouth. So close now, that mouth, so scented and sap-soaked.

Hannibal only spasmed against him, his head snapping from side to side. "Please, Will," he rasped. "I need—"

It was his helplessness that did it. Will knew that abandon, had known it as his own. He pulled back his hand and shoved it back between their bodies. Slick red rootlets snaked after it in pursuit.

"Maybe this is how we get out of this," Will said.

No second thoughts, no hesitation — only want. He found and pulled at the ties of their trousers. The tree helped him in his task until they were both bare, all stiff heat that dripped with sap and their own precome. Lascivious little scions danced about their cocks, spinning into coral ribbons that bound and pressed them together. Will's palm slid over the heads, squeezing and rubbing down through hot slickness, theirs and the tree's.

They pushed closer of their own accord. Their hips collided in a hard rhythm. At long last, there was no keeping their lips apart. Will sunk into that soft mouth. He sucked his fill from Hannibal's tongue, listened to their cries fill the great pit and felt the giddy delirium of being understood.

\---

They drifted, still bound, into light sleep. Their closeness kept them warm in the chill of the pit. Will half-dreamt: of the smallness of their bodies under the earth, of the branching labyrinth of Hannibal's home above them, silent and empty. Had the man sleeping in his arms been lost or found within its walls?

He dreamt of the sky above them. Was it still night? Had the first snow come? He imagined the tree in all its bloom and splendour, its luminous valley blanketed in white. He saw them stood before it together.

Hannibal stirred against Will's shoulder with a soft noise. He blinked up at Will, eyes still hazy. He peered about.

"Looking for your knife?" Will asked.

Hannibal gave him a coy look. Will reached up with his free hand, still sticky with sap and semen, and brushed his knuckles over Hannibal's cheekbone. "You did want to kill me. Remember?"

Hannibal's mouth parted at the touch. "Did I?"

Will said nothing. He might have smiled. He let his touch linger against that impossible cheekbone. He waited.

"You'd taken away what was mine," Hannibal said at last. "You changed it beyond all hope."

"I didn't," Will said, and felt a pang of unwelcome guilt. "I wasn't trying to. It found me, sought me out." He ran his thumb over the bottom of Hannibal's lip, both smooth and still sticky with remnants of sap. "Were you going to feed me to it?"

"I didn't feed her to it, in answer to your earlier accusation."

"No. But there were others, weren't there? The men who killed her — were they the first?"

Hannibal's eyes scanned Will's face. "The better fed it was, the more potent its scent. And more vivid my memory of her."

"But not potent or vivid enough," Will said. "And so when stagmares and other creatures didn't cut it, you started a rumour that led idiots into the woods. They became fodder for that redolent essence you sought."

Hannibal gave a single nod. He looked so lost. Will couldn't shake the unexpected invasion of guilt.

Somewhere in the distance, there was a low rumble. Was a storm breaking somewhere high above them, beyond the pit and the castle?

"Did you ever share in its feasts?" Will asked.

Hannibal's shoulders shifted against the bonds. "You try to see too much, Will. Rather than continuing with this interrogation, wouldn't you rather help set us free? Pleasant as this arrangement has been so far, it's unsustainable. I'd like to leave here."

Will held his gaze. He'd barely noticed, but his hand had lingered on Hannibal's face, cupping his neck and jaw.

"So — you must have seen it feed," he said. "It must have been tempting to take a few choice cuts for yourself. Rude not to share a meal with your one true companion."

Another pull against the bonds, but not away from Will's touch. Hannibal's expression had turned strangely blank. "Wouldn't you have done it, in the end? How close did you come to abandoning the world of men for the sake of your strange bridegroom, Will?"

"We've both been its bride now," Will said. He leaned in and kissed Hannibal's mouth again, chasing after trace taste of caramel moonlight. "I was afraid you'd destroy it," he murmured into the kiss, and then they were locked together again, soft lips and teasing tongues melting together into pure sweetness.

That rumble again, more pronounced now. It was enough to break them apart. From high above, a few fine pieces of grit or dirt came tumbling down over them. They looked up, then at each other.

"That noise," Will whispered. "It's not thunder."

Somewhere, far off in the distance, in the infinite maze of crimson and bone sprouted beneath the Great Wood, the rumbling sound grew louder. Something was coming closer, faster.

Hannibal shifted in his bonds with sudden urgency. "No. It's the tunnels."

Will's heart spiked with fear. He looked about. "They've stopped. The roots, they've gone still. What's happening?"

Hannibal shook his head. The distant cacophony didn't sound like thunder anymore. It sounded like an avalanche. They both said it together:

"Knife."

“Push on top of me,” Hannibal said. “Use your free arm for leverage, see if you can move us. Quickly, Will.”

Will did as he was told. He pushed off with his arm, using all the strength he could summon, and forced them into a roll towards Hannibal’s knife. Their bonds dragged stiffly in their wake. The stone floor underneath them was starting to quiver, the shower of grit coming down thickly now.

Will groped for the knife behind them and began to saw through the bonds on his other hand. Not one of the tree's bonds protested the cuts. The vines snapped like dry wicker. Will shrugged and shifted and kicked until he had them both free. He staggered to his feet and grabbed for Hannibal's hand.

"Will— move!"

They both jumped away just in time. From high above, an enormous tangle of red roots collapsed at their feet. The ground shook. The rhythmic rumble was close now, growling in the soaring walls.

“Something’s happened to it,” Will panted. "Something—"

Hannibal jerked his head in a nod. He groped for Will's hand. "Come. There's a ladder."

Will pulled against the hold. He didn't know where to look, where to run. All around them, swathes of the tree's elaborate crimson tapestry were peeling away from the walls, sliding and tumbling down to the stone floor.

"We have to help it."

"Will. Do you wish to leave here alive?"

"We have to do something. We have to save it. Please."

Hannibal pulled him in close by the wrists. "What do you propose we do?" he said through his teeth. "We must save ourselves first."

Fear won against desperation. Hannibal ran, and Will ran after him, towards the far end of the pit and away from the wave of destruction. There, the more ancient of tree's roots had spun ragged ladders that led up, past the high-hung lanterns, to the surface.

They started to climb. Another crash shook the earth below them. Will looked back down and saw Hannibal a few steps below — he'd stopped in his ascent. He was looking back, staring down into pit and the pyre raised up in its centre, with its faded lace and pale hair and tiny bones, all still untouched by the approaching chaos.

Will called down to him.

No response. The tangled wall they were scaling was quivering with the approaching rumble. Beneath them, the steps were beginning to unravel.

"Hannibal!" Will called again.

Hannibal didn't budge. His feet skidded on what remained of his crumbling support. Will saw the thick root beneath his foot snap. Still he hung on, didn't turn.

Will shifted down his length of ladder and grabbed for Hannibal's wrist, dangerously slippery in his grip.

"Hannibal. She can't come with us."

Hannibal seemed to stir, as from a dream. "No. She belongs to it. Now and for all time." He peered up at Will. "And where do you belong?"

Will shook his head. Answers crowded into his mouth, all of them terrifying.

"Come on," he whispered.

Hannibal went. They raced up towards the surface, leaving behind the collapsing carnage of dust and twisted crimson, a true lifeless tomb at last.

\---

One by one, the lights below went out.

All was black. Somewhere nearby, footsteps. A single lantern flickered on.

Will didn't look up. He knew he was back in the castle. He sat on the floor of the great hall and held his head in his hands. He listened to the roar and tremor of the labyrinth beneath them.

"Jack," he whispered hoarsely.

He heard Hannibal stir. "Crawford?"

Will nodded. "It had to be."

Hannibal's voice was pure venom. "How much did he know?"

"Enough to go after me into the woods. He must have—" Will waved his hand, as if the air could produce answers. What could Jack have done to bring this about? And had Will been wrong to let Beverly go?

"If he has destroyed it—"

Venom again. Will knew what sat on the other end of that _if_. He felt it too, a pure white rage and hurt radiating out of him.

"I'm going," he said and forced himself to stand. His wounded leg had stiffened and now howled with ache. "Lend me a mount, I need to go now."

"You're going nowhere without me."

Will looked back. Hannibal's face by the glow of the lantern was a bright-eyed stone-like skull, utterly unyielding.

"Go yourself," Will told him and limped as best as he could for the staircase.

"I can't," Hannibal said after him.

Will stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at the shape of him in the near darkness. "You— what do you mean, you can't?"

"I don't know where to go."

Will stepped closer, speechless.

Hannibal hesitated for a moment. “After she died, I took the sapling deep into the forest. I left it to its own devices," he said. "I never wanted to see it again. Some years later, the root maze reached my new home. I do not know how it wound its way back to me. I searched for the tree then. I walked the tunnels for days. But I never found it. Not until I saw you in my mind's eye.”

Something in Will's chest began to ache. What was it that he had wondered, about Hannibal having been lost or found inside the walls of his empty home? He knew the answer now. He reached again for Hannibal's hand.

"It must be daybreak by now," he said. "Three hours to get there, if we ride fast."

\---

Snow had fallen in the night and glistened by the first light of day over the sprawl of fields and the distant rooftops of Balti.

They rode out into the frosted dawn as fast as their horses would carry them over icy roads. Will glanced back at the hooded figure galloping behind him. He remembered the urgent press of Hannibal's body against his own, the heat, the closeness. He turned back quickly.

The dark line of the wood stretched out before them. They rode into the trees as far as they could until the horses could find nowhere to steady their hooves.

The new snow couldn't disguise the destruction that had heaved itself upon the Great Wood.

They dismounted and took it all in mortified silence: the scattering of sinkholes that carpeted the floor of the forest, the trees that lay scattered with upended roots, as if a massive storm of boulders had come down from the heavens. When the tree's tunnels collapsed, the very foundation of the wood crumbled with them.

Will felt sick with dread. He groped for his knife and gestured for Hannibal to follow him down the barely recognisable trek.

"I am less convinced that Jack Crawford had anything to do with this," Hannibal murmured behind him.

"Then who did this?" Will whispered, and he could barely disguise the terror in his voice. He was shivering in the coat Hannibal had given him.

They walked on. They were closer now — Will glimpsed the brim of the valley behind a felled oak.

And that's when they saw them, dozens and dozens of them, pressed into the innocent snow. They were huge as wagon wheels, and shaped like teardrops cleft in two. Hoof prints.

A single word tumbled from Will's mouth. Its revelation held all his fears.

“Stagmares."

He didn't look back. He ran, Hannibal close behind. They both stumbled and skidded down, into a tragedy.

Will was the first to his feet. He looked wildly about the valley and choked back a cry of pain.

Nothing soared above their heads. No seductive splendour of coral vines and pearly blooms. Only the lead emptiness of a snowy sky looking down over the silent aftermath of battle.

Will staggered forward, through splintered branches and broken boughs. They lay everywhere, trampled by great hooves. The only crimson in sight was the deep venous red of stagmare blood splattered in the snow. Here and there lay clumps of feather-fur and snapped off pieces of giant antlers.

Nothing remained of the great trunk. A crater sat in place of it, as black and dead as the pit inside Castle Lecter.

Will sank down into the snow. He mouthed silently at their air, trying to give shape to his grief. The icy air stung the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Stagmares. They must have come in the night, in great rank, from across the Great Wood. Will could picture their rage, their final resolve to destroy the ravenous thing that had been felling their ranks.

He clutched at a handful of splintered branches. They had been warm and undulating, so loving about his body. Now they sat in his hand, common inorganic matter. He peered back at Hannibal and the ache in his chest doubled.

Hannibal was shuffling towards him as if wounded. His hood had fallen and hair was in his eyes. He bore the same lost look Will had glimpsed down in the pit, wide-eyed and frozen as the ground beneath their feet.

He dropped down to his knees beside Will. He extended his hands. Will wiped at his face to clear his vision.

In Hannibal's cupped palms lay a twig, still a coral red and undulating gently against the black leather of Hannibal's gloves.

"I found this," Hannibal told him softly.

Will shook his head.

“No," he whispered through his tears. "Don't."

“Don’t you want it, Will? It loved you more than it had loved anything. More than it could have loved her." Hannibal's head dropped onto his chest. "It certainly didn’t love me.”

“You couldn’t contain it," Will said. "You nurtured a curiosity that got out of hand and look at what it's done. You want me to grow it again. I would only create something monstrous again."

Hannibal's head remained lowered, gloved hand locked tightly about the tiny twig.

"It loved you," he said again.

A gust of wind sang through the tops of the trees.

The wind carried human voices, human steps. A search party was coming, and it could only be looking for one thing.

"Will—"

Will fell suddenly forward. He flung his arms about Hannibal, too much force and desperation. He kissed his mouth. It still tasted sweet.

"You need to go. Now."

Hannibal's hold on him was just as crushing. He shook his head hard.

"We are on the brink, you and I. We could start anew. Grow anew."

"If Jack finds you here—"

"Come with me."

Where? How? Will wanted to ask. To the dead isolation of the castle, with its halls of empty mirrors and portraits of dead girls? Into some unknown, untouched wilderness he could hardly fathom existed? And still Will's heart begged of him: _where do you belong?_

Will pulled back and shoved at him. His throat was thick with tears.

"Go. And don't look for me. Or I'll turn you in. Or kill you."

The voices were closer now. Shouting, barking, all streamed in through the trees.

Hannibal stood. He peered down at Will, expressionless again.

“I ran from it too, Will. For years. But there is no denying Nature its due. Remember that.”

He slipped on his hood, turned and walked away quickly, through the wreckage that belonged to both of them in equal measure.

Will was left alone on his knees in the snow. He shut his eyes and breathed in slowly. He smelled nothing — only the cold winter air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you bollock me for an unhappy ending: there will be a short epilogue in a couple of days.
> 
> I'm sorry for making them fuck next to Mischa's corpse.

**Author's Note:**

> Stagwood is obviously inspired by ambergris. I've never smelled pure ambergris. Damnit.


End file.
